Threat warning

CHAPTER TWENTY – THREE

“At least we know that Ryan is in Copley’s house,” Venice said. “That’s important data.”

“I disagree,” Jonathan said. “All we know is that Neen dropped him off there. Other than that, we’ve got only conjecture.”

“And what about the mom, Christyne?” Gail asked. “Nobody even mentioned her.”

“Baby steps,” Jonathan advised. “Explore the lead you’ve got, and hope that the others fall into place.”

“By sheer dumb luck?” she asked with a chuckle.

“In a perfect world, no,” Jonathan said. Her negative tone was beginning to wear on him. “But if the best I can catch is pure dumb luck, then I’ll take it.”

Boxers said, “I recognize that look, Dig. What’s the plan?”

Jonathan looked at his watch. “We know that the meeting of the elders-whatever the hell that means-takes place a little over five hours from now, at seven.”

Venice said, “Digger, do you agree that the conversation we eavesdropped on said that the meet was going to happen in Copley’s house?”

“I do,” he said.

“Good,” Venice said. “Because when he built the place twelve years ago, he used an architect and a professional engineer. And wouldn’t you know it? He had the decency to file all the plans at the assessments office at the courthouse.”

Jonathan grinned, yet again amazed by Venice’s capabilities to ferret out information. “Are you telling me you have drawings?”

He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I’ve got floor plans, electrical, HVAC, sewerage, you name it.”

Gail scowled, as if to say, Is that even possible?

“Only a fool bets against Venice,” Jonathan said.

“This is unbelievable!” Venice howled from Fisherman’s Cove. “Copley likes to buy his furniture from a place called Colony House in Falls Church. I can send you purchase orders, if you’d like.”

Jonathan assured her that that would not be necessary.

It took a few minutes for the floor plans and other architectural drawings to transfer, but once they did, the first stage of their plan became obvious. Jonathan discussed it with his team, spending the better part of an hour working through the details and the possible complications-of which there were too many to count-but when they were done, everybody had a job to do.

They’d changed into black, despite the brightness of the day.

Camouflage was a particularly difficult challenge in the wintertime, given the absence of leaves on the trees. Throw in the fact that every breath you took launched a cloud of condensation into the air, and blaze orange was as good a color as any to stay invisible.

Rather than trying to blend in with their surroundings, then, Jonathan’s team had opted to blend in with their adversaries. They’d still make every effort to remain invisible, but on the off chance that they were spotted, they hoped that the spotters might see armed people in black and assume that they were friendlies. It was a high-risk bet, but sometimes you just had to play the hand you were dealt.

They drove from the command post to a side road near the Copley house, but far enough away to remain undetected. Following their GPS, they hiked a quarter-mile due west to the fence line. From there, it would be another quarter mile to the house itself.

Contrary to Jonathan’s conservative survival plan, they forwent the heavy body armor that he generally would have insisted upon-ditto the Kevlar helmets-in order to match the kit worn by the resident guards. Jonathan also left behind the twelve-gauge Mossberg shotgun that he would normally have worn slung under his armpit, and the bandolier of ammunition that went along with it. You never knew what kind of spotters they had deployed, and that kind of accoutrement was just too easily identified.

There was a limit, though, to the extent Jonathan would go to blend in. They would each carry their M4 carbines, which looked enough like the M16s used by the staff to pass a cursory glance, but he insisted that each of them carry a full load of ten extra mags of ammunition, for a total of three hundred rounds. It bulked them up on their web gear, but ammunition was the one thing he would never scrimp on. They each carried a sidearm, as well. Jonathan had his Colt 1911. 45, Boxers his Beretta nine millimeter, and Gail her Glock. 40. Sidearms were the most personal of weapons. The smart warrior carried the one with which he was most comfortable. Gail’s years in the FBI had made the Glock. 40 second nature to her.

Jonathan also insisted on night vision. The violent side of his world was inescapably tied to the night, and the ability to navigate where others were blind was the single greatest playing-field leveler. Each of them, then, carried a rucksack that contained night vision, glow sticks, a couple of general-purpose charges with initiators, plus a supply of Pop-Tarts-a high-sugar and high-carb source of emergency food in case their PCs hadn’t been fed in a while.

The hike through the woods was entirely uneventful. They walked cautiously, trying to make as little noise as possible in the dried leaves and underbrush, but daytime stealth was different from nighttime stealth. The trick was to look as natural as possible while still trying to remain undetected.

They spread out, too, keeping fifty yards between them both laterally and longitudinally. Boxers led, with Jonathan bringing up the rear. They kept in contact with each other and with Venice-“Mother Hen”-via encrypted radio.

“Hey, Scorpion,” Venice said through Jonathan’s left earbud. “I’ve got more good news for you. The house has got security cameras, and they beam their signals to a security company via the Internet.”

Jonathan pressed the transmit button in the center of his chest. “How is that good news?”

He could hear the pride when she said, “Because I own the Internet. I’m working right now to record empty fields of view. If you can give me a half hour, I’ll be able to loop the recordings and route the fake images to the transmitters.”

Amazing, Jonathan thought. “What are their fields of view?”

“Assuming that they use only one company to monitor, it appears that only the house itself-the perimeter and the interior-are monitored.”

“The fence line?”

“Absolutely.”

“Mother Hen, you’re my hero,” Jonathan said. He knew that Venice would take it as the high praise that he had intended.

Ten minutes later, Jonathan, Boxers, and Gail all arrived at the fence that surrounded Michael Copley’s sprawling home. The fence was nothing special-chain link, but of a gauge more suitable to a secure military facility than, say, a swimming pool. A Y-shaped bed of barbed wire capped the fence. If the links proved too tough to cut-and Jonathan guessed that they would-those same links would be that much easier to climb, and provide that much more stable a platform to take out the barbed wire with a pair of snips.

“Sure is a lot of sunshine out here,” Boxers grumped as they hunkered together in some bushes at the base of a very significant oak tree.

Jonathan looked at his watch. It was almost four o’clock. “Not for long. Give it another hour.”

“Bullshit,” Boxers said. “I’ll give Mother Hen the thirty minutes she needs to cover my ass, and then I’m going to work.”

Watching Jonathan and Boxers interact with each other-the lighthearted banter in the face of impending danger-Gail realized that she didn’t belong here. She would never be a full-fledged member of the team. These two men shared so much history-so much past pleasure and pain-that she couldn’t hope to become a part of it.

Everything about this operation felt alien to her. In her ordered world, formerly defined by the rule of law, planning meant everything. You didn’t make a move without a piece of paper telling you it was approved, and you didn’t fire a shot unless you were one-hundred-twenty-percent sure that it was defensible in court.

Even the sole focus on the rescue of the precious cargo was unique to her experience. During her days with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, the primary goal hadn’t truly been the liberation of the hostages. Rather, it had been to lawfully ensure that the bad guys did not get away, and that the legal case you built against them would withstand the scrutiny of the bad guys’ legal defense team. They worked very, very hard to make sure that the hostages remained unharmed, but at the end of the day, it was a better career move to convict a kidnapper for murdering a hostage than it was to reunite a hostage with his family and then have his assailant walk on a technicality.

Gail was surprised by how rapidly her heart was hammering in her chest. She didn’t dare contribute to her colleagues’ banter for fear that her voice would tremble in the process.

She told herself to settle down. This wasn’t the first time that she’d strayed outside the law while in Jonathan’s employ. That trend had started on the mountaintop in Pennsylvania, and then continued into the wilds of Alaska some months later. She’d approved illegal wiretaps and photographs that never should have been taken, but those were mere violations of civil rights. She’d killed, but that had always been in self-defense. Jonathan was right to question her ability to kill prophylactically. That skill-to kill in order to eliminate an enemy before he could kill you-was perhaps the single most important factor that separated what police did from what soldiers did.

Studies had been written about it, in fact. Several decades ago, during America’s War on Drugs, the Drug Enforcement Administration had enlisted the aid of Navy SEALs for the interdiction of seaborne drug trafficking. The planners had envisioned the SEALs as a legal force multiplier that would chase down bad guys, place them under arrest, and recover countless millions of dollars in drugs.

In practice, the plan had proven disastrous. The SEALs chased down the boats easily enough, and they recovered the millions of dollars in drugs, but more often than not, there were no people left to arrest. If a bad guy had a gun, he was killed, consistent with the SEALs’ long-standing training.

It made sense when Gail thought about it. What was the point in having a conversation with a guy who wants to kill you?

If only prosecutors were that sensible.

The lesson learned from SEAL exercise was that training trumped intentions. When you invest millions of dollars in creating a warrior, that’s what you get. You don’t get a cop.

Now, Gail worried that the opposite was true. Could she be the warrior she needed to be when the time came to pull the trigger? And if not, then who would take her place?

Finally, an easy answer: No one would take her place. If she froze, the mission would come unzipped; and if that happened, everyone might die.

She could do this, she told herself. All it took was a total commitment to “We’ve got a guard coming,” Boxers’ voice said in her ear.

Gail shot her gaze first to the Big Guy, and then followed his eyeline into the woods, where a black-clad sentry was wandering into view.

“No guns,” Jonathan whispered. As he spoke, he drew his KA-BAR knife from its scabbard on his left shoulder. The finely honed edge flashed white against the flat black finish of the blade. Gail shifted her eyes and saw Boxers mimic the move.

Her own knife remained in its sheath on her belt. Another training deficit. She reached out to Jonathan and touched his arm.

He glanced at her briefly, then shook his head and pursed his lips in a silent shh.

“Let him go unless he poses a threat.” Jonathan’s whisper was barely audible over the radio.

Gail settled more deeply behind the bush that provided her concealment, her heart hammering Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus.” To her right, Jonathan and Boxers both looked like coiled snakes, every muscle tensed, their knives ready to separate the guard’s soul from his body.

The foliage confounded any clear view of the man as he approached, but to Gail’s eye he could have been the very sentry they’d seen in Rollins’s satellite photo. Tall and lean, he appeared to be young. He wore his M16 casually, dangling by a sling from his shoulder. He was nowhere near ready to confront an intruder. He had the complacent, bored look of a man who’d been walking the same route for far too long while seeing far too little action. Gail thought ruefully that she could probably jump out at him and yell, “Boo!” and he’d be half a mile away before he ever got his hand to his weapon.

This was all good news.

As the sentry approached within a few yards of their hiding place, Gail looked at Jonathan, whose eyes never left his prey. He remained perfectly still, nothing moving but his eyes as the young man passed the tree that shielded them, and then continued to wander down the line and around the corner. The danger had come and passed in a little over a minute. When the guard was out of sight, Jonathan’s shoulders finally relaxed.

“That was encouraging,” Boxers said, sliding his KA-BAR back into its scabbard. “I like clueless guards.”

Jonathan raised his eyebrows as he slid his own knife into its sheath. “I make it a point not to underestimate anybody with an automatic weapon.”

“Actually, I thought I was overestimating,” Boxers countered with a smile.

“Are you guys safe and clear now?” Venice asked over the radio.

Jonathan touched the transmit button. “Affirm,” he said. “Wasn’t even close.”

Really? Gail thought. What does close look like if that wasn’t it?

“You sounded pretty tight on the radio,” Venice said. “Are you sure?”

“Does it matter?” Emotionally, Venice had the most difficult job on the team. Hers was a world of impressions and anticipation, while the team on the ground had the benefit-for good or ill-of real-time knowledge. It never hurt to shield her from certain realities.

Venice said, “I’ve got all the footage I need for the broadcast loop. Are you ready to go?”

It was the statement they’d been waiting for-the statement Gail had been dreading. Was she ready to go?

“Are you spinning the recording?” Jonathan asked.

“All the monitoring company will see is uninterrupted boredom,” she reported. “But understand that I’m going to need to record again. We’re going to have to show nighttime approaching. Otherwise the monitors will see something wrong. Then, once it gets dark, I’ll need another half hour of darkness to make the loop.”

“Shit,” Jonathan cursed off the air. He hadn’t considered that.

“I’ll give you plenty of notice,” Venice assured. “I’ll also be monitoring the live feed, so I’ll be able to tell you if danger approaches.”

“Are we set?” Jonathan asked his team.

Boxers was already on his feet, walking toward the fence.

Gail nodded, but apparently, it wasn’t convincing.

“This is fish-or-cut-bait time, Gail,” he said softly.

She nodded more aggressively this time. “Let’s go,” she said.

They chose a spot along the fence in the rear sector of the estate where trees pressed in close and drooped over the barbed wire. Jonathan judged this to be a spot where the cuts they needed to make would be less likely to be spotted.

Boxers climbed the fence with a dexterity that Gail would have found impressive from anyone, but particularly given his size. Maybe it helped that by just standing at its base, he was already three-quarters of the way to the top. He planted the toe of one boot in the wire mesh of the fence and reached with one hand to raise himself high enough that the barbed wire was at face height. He’d already drawn the snips with his other hand.

“I hate this part,” he said. He placed the jaws of the snips around the wire, then hunched one shoulder to protect his neck, and looked away and down. “In three,” he said. “Two, one.”

There was a snapping sound, and then the wire sagged. He repeated the procedure for the four lines of wire on their side of the fence, and then he leaned across and dispatched the four lines on the far side. That done, Boxers continued up and over the side.

“You okay, Big Guy?” Jonathan asked. “You look a little winded.”

“Winded my ass,” Boxers replied. “When you get your little razor butt over here, we’ll arm wrestle and see who wins.”

It had been a long time since Gail had climbed a fence, and she was proud of herself for doing it with her dignity intact. When they were all assembled on the other side, she said to Jonathan, “What happens when the sentry notices the cut wire?”

He shrugged and forced a smile. “That’s another one of those moments where we pray for luck to be on our side.”

The lucky breaks were beginning to stack pretty high.

They spread out to recon the mansion from the outside. Sooner or later, they were going to have to enter the house, and before committing to that kind of risk, they needed to learn as much about the place as they could. Jonathan and Boxers split the duties to view the front and sides, each of them taking positions on either side of the long driveway, and Gail was relegated to watching the rear and reporting on what she saw.

Despite the risk of losing the Nasbes in the next hour or two, Jonathan decided to wait till nightfall to approach the mansion. The ability to function at night was such a huge force multiplier that it was worth the risk. Easy to say, he supposed, until he found out that the bad guys had harmed the family while they were waiting things out.

Jonathan worked his way into a thicket of evergreens in the southeast corner of the front yard, where he could see a good bit of the driveway and the front door of the residence. He imagined that Boxers had a similar view on the opposite side of the driveway.

Moving slowly and quietly, Jonathan settled into his hidey-hole and oh-so-carefully slipped out of his ruck. Reaching into a side pocket, he found his digital monocular, and brought it to his eye. With the digital boosting, he could dial in to sixty-power, but at that magnification, even his heartbeat made the image dance. He settled for twelve-power.

Two sentries stood guard on the front porch, flanking the front door. Both wore sidearms-they looked like Glocks, but both of them stood with arms akimbo, their hands resting on the pistol grips, making positive ID impossible. If they had access to long guns, those weapons were out of sight.

Jonathan pressed the mike button on his vest. “I’m in position and I count two bad guys at the front door.”

Boxers’ voice popped in his earbud. “I’m in position and I confirm two at the front door. I don’t see any others.”

“The black side is clear,” Gail said. In their parlance, front was white, back was black, left was green, and right was red.

“Mother Hen, how do you copy?” Jonathan asked.

“Clear as crystal,” Venice said. “The live feed shows the one sentry on patrol still, but he seems to be taking a break, and sticking close to the fence line. He’s not a problem for now.”

“Copy that,” Jonathan said. “Mother Hen, I want you to prompt us for a sit rep every fifteen minutes while we’re spread this far apart. Otherwise, let’s keep the channel clear unless there’s something to report.”

Surveying the mansion, Jonathan noticed nothing special. It was a big old place, built in the style of old plantation houses, complete with pillars in the front that would please Scarlett O’Hara if she saw them. The drawings they’d studied showed it to be about ten thousand square feet on the main two levels, plus basement space underneath.

Pulling the monocular away from his eye, he pulled the floor plan from his pocket and studied it some more. If there was one thing he’d learned the hard way it was that any floor plan that was older than five years-this one was dated thirty years ago-was as reliable as an unwound watch. All the parts would be there, you just never knew how accurate the arrangement would be. He remembered one prison rescue back in the day when all of their intelligence data told them that there would be wide-open space after turning a corner, but when they got there, he encountered a reinforced concrete wall. They’d managed a work-around, but that one nearly cost them the mission.

Still, the drawings provided a sense of scale. And important landmarks such as stairways and utility lines normally remained constant even after major renovations. As long as he could In the distance, a thick crack split the air. Clearly a gunshot, it sounded far away, but had the unique qualities of one particular weapon.

“Scorpion, Big Guy,” Boxers’ voice said in his ear. “Did that sound like a Barrett to you?”

Yes, it did. Just like that, this mission took on a new tenor.

Michael Copley tucked the recoil pad of the massive Barrett. 50-caliber sniper rifle into the soft notch of his shoulder, rested his hand atop the stock, and his cheek atop the back of his hand. Through his ten-power scope, he wasn’t sure he would recognize the true nature of his target if he hadn’t designed it himself. He certainly would not have recognized the finer points of the design.

The Model 9000 Symphonic Reflector-the gold standard in acoustic reflectors-sat firmly in its frame, fifteen hundred yards away, fixed in the braces that he’d designed specifically for outdoor use. It wouldn’t do, after all, to ruin the very performances these were designed to augment by blowing over in a wind. Sturdy yet lightweight; high quality yet inexpensive. That’s what made Appalachian Acoustics so popular.

Certainly, that’s what had sold these units to the federal government. When the United States Navy Band played a concert, every note was worthy of being heard, as was every word spoken by dignitaries and heads of state. Indoors or outdoors, the Model 9000 worked better than any other on the market.

Presently, the panel on the opposite hilltop was positioned as if the concert were being delivered away from Copley, and his scope was thus showing him the back side of the panels. His sight picture, then, was the Appalachian Acoustics logo, printed over and over in a pattern that appeared random, but in fact was anything but.

At this range, every environmental factor mattered, from the slightest breeze to the moisture content of the air. As far as the latter was concerned, thank God for the cold winter. At this temperature, the atmosphere was bone dry.

He’d entered the air temperature, windage, and ammunition data into his handheld ballistics computer, and the results were as astounding as they always were. While the target was stationary, he nonetheless had to compensate for the ten-mile-per-hour breeze and the impossibly long distance. His computer told him to correct for 260 inches of drop and a lot of drift. In a sport where half-seconds of angle resulted in huge misses, this business of sighting in his scope became ridiculously important. When the time came to take his real shot, there’d be no room for trial and error.

“The spotter is safe,” said Brother Franklin from his right. “Fire when ready.” A member of the Board of Elders, Brother Franklin was one of the original founders of the Army of God, and the second-best sniper in the group, next to Michael himself. Both had trained for years.

Trained for this one shot.

Copley ran the numbers in his head, and found the appropriate mark on the logo. He placed that spot in the very lower rightmost arc of his sight picture. He took a deep breath, let half of it go, and then caressed the trigger.

The firing pin engaged, and the weapon erupted, launching its massive, 660-grain bullet at 2,800 feet per second. As the shell casing flew from the receiver, the muzzle brake and floating barrel took most of the recoil, or the kick might have broken bones. It would take over a second and a half for the half-inch-diameter bullet to traverse its nearly 1,500-yard trajectory. He’d just brought his scope back to the sight picture when he saw the panel move.

He’d hit his spot precisely; but it wouldn’t be time to smile until he knew he’d hit the true target, which was beyond the panel, and out of his sight. A few seconds later, one of the children from the compound rose from behind the rock that shielded him and waved a white flag over his head.

“Dead center,” Brother Franklin said. “White means perfect shot.” He lay next to Michael on his stomach on the ground, peering through the eyepiece of a digital spotting scope. “Great job, Brother Michael.” Truly, it was a shot that the best snipers in the world would have trouble making.

“One more,” Brother Michael said. He again settled the reticle into the most unlikely part of the scope and launched another bullet.

The boy with the flag dove for cover after the bullet hit, and then sheepishly raised the white flag again.

“Perfect,” Brother Franklin said. He couldn’t help but laugh, and then he patted Michael on the shoulder. “It was a mean thing to do to the boy, but it was perfect. Two in a row is a trend,” he said.

Copley lifted his cheek from the weapon, and then pushed himself up to a kneeling position. “This is one amazing weapon,” he said.

“But hardly practical,” Franklin countered. “What does it weigh? Twenty-five pounds?”

“Twenty-eight and a half, empty,” Copley said. “Not my first choice for close quarters.”

Copley left the weapon on the ground and stood, brushing dirt from the front of his clothes. Franklin joined him. Together, they walked to the flat rock where they’d placed their backpacks and a thermos of coffee. Copley poured into Franklin’s cup first, and then into his own.

“It has cream and sugar,” Copley said. “I hope that suits.”

“In this weather, all that matters is that it’s hot,” Franklin replied.

They sipped in silence for nearly a minute. Finally, Copley said, “I had dual purposes for bringing you here, Brother Franklin.”

“I figured as much,” the other man said. “You rarely have only one thing on your mind.”

Copley smiled at what he perceived to be a compliment. “Even more so now that the war has begun,” he said. “I want you to speak freely.”

Franklin half nodded, half shrugged.

“What do you think of the video we put out on the Internet?”

“You mean of the User family? Wasn’t that the plan from the beginning?”

“A question is not an answer to a question,” Copley admonished.

Franklin’s whole body shrugged. “I think it’s what we needed to do. What’s the sense of having assets if you’re not willing to exploit them?”

“Did you feel that the recording and airing of the video were the evidence of hubris on my part?”

Franklin looked uncomfortable.

“Again, I ask you to speak freely.”

He took his time. “I don’t know how to answer you,” Franklin said. “Hubris means pride, and I suppose that pride is a sin, yet, you have every reason to be proud of what we are accomplishing.”

“Was it the right thing to do, in your opinion?”

“It was an important thing to do. The necessary thing to do. The entire point was to portray ourselves as a Muslim offshoot. That’s a main strategy.”

Copley found himself smiling at the words he’d wanted to hear.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why do you ask the question?”

“Brother Kendig,” Copley said. In its own way, that was a complete answer.

Franklin took a sip of his coffee and gave a conciliatory nod. “Well, yes. Brother Kendig has always been… careful. Is he the one who accused you of hubris?”

“On more than one occasion.” Copley paused to consider his next question. “What do you think of the good Sheriff Neen?”

There was that uneasy look again. “I think that he’s been a friend of mine for many years.”

Copley sat on the flat rock, ignoring the aching cold that seeped through his trousers and into his spine. “Do you think he is an asset to our mission, or a hindrance?”

Franklin joined his commander on the rock. “You ask me to speak frankly, and then you ask a question about loyalty. In time of war, the underlying accusation carries a death sentence.”

“For good cause,” Copley said.

Franklin took his time assembling his words. “I’ve known you for many years, Brother Michael. For as many years as we have both known Brother Kendig. If you’re harboring paranoid thoughts that he is somehow against what we are doing, then I respectfully-”

“Not against us,” Michael said, raising his hand to interrupt. “Just not entirely with us.”

“Two ways of saying the same thing, sir. The entire community has trained long and hard for this war. For those who are under twenty, they have trained their entire lives. Much of that training came from Brother Kendig. Without him, we would not be empowered as we are now.”

“But people change, do they not?”

Franklin considered that. “Of course they do. We all change. Our hair turns gray with time, and we get winded sooner during physical training. But I don’t believe that we change fundamentally. I believe that who we are remains who we are. That means Kendig is a talented soldier and loyal to the cause.”

“Yet he disrespects me,” Copley mused aloud. None of this was what he’d expected to hear. Brother Franklin’s words, in fact, made him wonder if a conspiracy of sorts might be in play.

“If you say, then it must be so. But if you’re seeking my counsel as an elder, then my advice to you is to think carefully about the space that separates disagreement from disloyalty.” He paused, obviously hesitant to state the rest. “One could argue that if a person holds an opinion deeply and firmly enough, disagreement could be judged the highest degree of loyalty. Sir.”

In an academic setting such lofty statements would have more meaning for Copley than they did right now. For a team to function healthily, dissent was wrong. He was surprised that Franklin didn’t already know this.

“What are your thoughts on the execution?” Copley asked.

Franklin’s answer came without pause. “I think that you have no choice. They killed a soldier.”

“The boy maintains that he was protecting his mother from rape,” Copley baited. “I cannot say that such a crime is beyond the reach of Brother Stephen.”

“And had he lived, he would have been appropriately punished,” Franklin said. “As it is, that opportunity for justice was denied.”

“Exactly,” Copley said. “And do you agree that the execution should be broadcast live on the Internet?”

Franklin’s body seemed to stiffen with the question. “Is that important?”

“Our goal is to rend the fabric of what the Users believe is comfort in their lives. Could there be anything more unsettling?”

Franklin hesitated. “Nothing I can think of.”

Copley didn’t like the noncommittal answer. “I said you can speak freely.”

A deep breath, followed by a settling sigh. “I worry about cause and effect,” he said. “Actions have consequences. It’s one thing to watch the news and hear and see reports of the mayhem the Army is sowing. But if you present the public with the spectacle of an execution, I fear that instead of justice, they will see only cruelty.”

“You fear,” Copley said. He was sick to death of that word. “Is cowardice in battle likewise not a crime?”

Franklin stood. “You told me to speak freely.”

Copley felt a wave of anger approaching, but he pushed it down. “Yes, I did,” he said. He stood as well and pointed with his chin to the rifle. “Are you up to more spotting?”

“I am,” Franklin said. As they covered the distance to the weapon, he said, “Please, Brother Michael. If I offended-”

Copley waved him off. “You’re fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

The two men moved almost in unison as they lowered themselves to their bellies on the ground in front of their respective toys. Copley positioned himself at the gunstock and wriggled a bit as he settled into a comfortable position on the ground.

“Be aware on the left,” Franklin said. “It looks like one of Mrs. Shockley’s cows has wandered out of the pasture.”

“Is it likely to wander into my field of fire?” Shooting was a head game, and he didn’t appreciate the interruption.

“Probably not. Not unless you shoot wild. She ranges at twenty-one fifty yards and three hundred twenty feet from the target.”

Copley reacquired the acoustic panel and ran the previous ballistic calculations through his head. “Is the cow moving or standing still?”

“Looks like she’s grazing.”

Without saying a word, Copley pivoted the Barrett to the left, adjusted in his head for the new range, and squeezed the trigger. Again. And again. The massive weapon bucked with each round, the pressure wave at the muzzle blasting dirt and leaves.

Two point two seconds later-long before the sound of the gunshots could arrive on the opposite hill-the cow erupted in a pink cloud, one of its hind legs spinning away and landing ten or fifteen feet from the rest of the carcass.

Copley smiled. He lifted his cheek from the butt stock and craned his neck to look over his shoulder at Franklin, whose face was a mask of disbelief.

“You didn’t even aim,” Franklin said.

“Of course I aimed. I just did it quickly.” He rose to his knees and hefted the Barrett from the ground. “But a shot like that tells you that it’s time to stop for the day.”

He walked back to the flat rock to begin the process of cleaning the weapon and returning it to its padded case, leaving Franklin to pick up the sandbags and other clutter from their shooting perch. Arriving at the rock, he gently placed the weapon butt-down on the flat surface. He removed the five-cartridge magazine and cleared the breach.

“Franklin?” he said without looking.

“Yes, sir?”

He liked the “sir.” That’s what happened when you made people nervous. “Can I count on you to make things happen tonight?”

“Of course,” he said. Then, after a beat: “What things are you talking about?”

“I want the entire compound assembled for the executions, and I want it on a live Internet feed. Route it as we did before.”

A long moment passed in silence. Copley turned to see Franklin just standing there. “Brother Franklin?”

He seemed startled. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll see to it. What time?”

“Eight-ish? After the trial.”

Franklin clearly wanted to object, but he swallowed his words. “Both of them, sir?”

“One at a time, of course. What do you think would make the best drama for television, a mother watching her son die first, or the other way around?”

There was that look again.

“I can count on you, can’t I, Brother Franklin?” The action of the Barrett made a loud clack as it slid closed.

“Always, Brother Michael.”

“Then who do you think we should send to God first, the woman or the boy?”

Franklin searched a long time for the right words. “I’m sure that any decision you make will be the right one, Brother Michael.”

That unsettled, appalled look would soon be shared by the entire world, Copley thought.