16

Howie broke the silence. Without turning around, he said loudly, “Okay, everybody. Go home.”

After an instant of silence as we all absorbed that, the room erupted into a mishmash of disbelief, refusal, and complaints. We were journalists, reporters. Our job was to inform. This was one of the most significant stories in American history. Go home? I had never before seen any quit in Howie.

He stood there, letting it play out. Finally he turned. His hands were still stuffed in his back pockets, but now tears were running down his face. “Lock it up,” he ordered in a tone that left no room for compromise. “Go home. Now.” Then he went into his office, closing the door behind him.

In retrospect, that probably was the right decision. There was no book entitled What to Do Till the Police Come for You. We lacked all protocol. Nothing prepared any of us for this; there were no instructions in the employee handbook. There was a lot of grumbling, but the office emptied quickly.

Jenny and I exchanged texts. “Going home,” I wrote. “See you there?”

“Crazed,” she responded. “The Hill is in chaos. No idea what’s going on. I’ll call later. Love you.”

“Okay. Love you too.” What else could I say? I decided to stop at Lucille’s, I wanted to be with people, but when I got in front of the place, I saw that the steel gate had been pulled down and all the lights were off.

My memories of that night are hazy. I do remember sitting in front of my TV watching the networks reporting the story. Truthfully, it was more announcing than reporting. I was not surprised that reactions ranged from mildly supportive to wildly supportive. There was literally no criticism. None. (Some media outlets knew how to retain their license.) It suddenly seemed obvious the administration had been laying the groundwork for this since the day Wrightman moved into the White House. I sat in my living room, sipping a beer, then a second and a third, speaking with different people and exchanging texts with others. Bottom line, no one had any idea what was going on, what was going to happen, or how to react.

Jenny didn’t call. She sent several more texts, all of them telling me in different ways that the Hill was in an uproar. People were running from meeting to meeting, trying to figure out how to stop this. Reactions there ranged from satisfaction and support to anger and tears.

Satisfaction to tears? That was a pretty wide spread and an accurate appraisal. Me? Mostly, I think, I felt lost. I felt like I was floating, waiting to see which way the winds would blow me. For someone like me, a person used to charging through the days with a plan, a direction, and an objective to guide me, this rootlessness was terrifying. Having absolutely no idea what to do, I fell back on the security of routine.

The gym was nearly empty the following morning. The scent of antiseptic from the overnight cleaning was still hanging in the air when I got there. A teenager was punishing the heavy bag, a dream in every punch. A ponytailed woman in a gray T-shirt was standing over a weighted bar, practicing the new psycholifting technique in which she visualized lifting it. It must have been a hard visualization, because a single dark gray line of sweat ran crookedly down the front of her shirt. But Hack wasn’t there. I needed to get an answer from him, nothing got started until I had that. He didn’t show. That wasn’t surprising. After Wrightman’s speech, I imagined it had to be a pretty hectic day inside those nonexistent agencies. But still, the fact that he hadn’t responded to my texts was disconcerting. I hesitated to call him. At that moment I probably wasn’t the most desirable phone pal for a government agent.

I went through an abbreviated workout, possibilities running through my mind like a slot machine searching for matching cherries. Wrightman had made the move to consolidate his power, and obviously done so with the backing of law enforcement and the military. I didn’t think he would have risked it without that assurance. So there was no going back; even if it could be proved the NSA had nearly murdered a planeload of innocent people, it would make little difference. The administration was sewing up the country tighter than a body bag. But that evidence still might make a significant difference.

The presidential election was scheduled to take place in fifteen months. Wrightman needed an election to maintain the illusion that America was still a functioning democracy. But he was such an overwhelming favorite to win reelection that for the first time in electoral history British bookmakers had stopped taking action; they couldn’t find enough opposition money to balance the bets. As it turned out, they couldn’t even find an opposition.

The president was considered such a sure thing that neither party had thus far been able to find a suitable candidate willing to risk his or her career, and now perhaps their freedom, by running against him. Those few people who had stepped forward were from the unelectable fringes of both parties; running would provide them with a glimmer of attention in exchange for becoming political fodder. Those billionaire businesspeople who might have opposed him had been scared off by the probable loss of government contracts. The media was no longer a factor: the FCC’s “equal time” regulations had been rescinded in the crisis regulations. The remaining media outlets had been consolidated through approved mergers into four major corporations, none of them willing to risk losing advertisers or their license by providing time or exposure to those fringe candidates.

I had a slim hope that the American people would react with horror when confronted with real evidence that Wrightman had instigated terror attacks to grab power and take their anger with them to the ballot box. If there was any chance of beating him other candidates would emerge. But time was running out for them to file in each of the fifty states.

Perhaps more important were the international ramifications. The administration initially had been welcomed by our allies for its commitment to respect new agreements reached with the Bidens in an attempt to return to international norms. The president had pledged to support our friends and stand with the Western democracies against our enemies. As a show of good faith, foreign aid grants had been restored. Ties with NATO continued to be strengthened. Many of our traditional allies, countries that had lost faith in America as the “arsenal of democracy” and the enduring symbol of freedom for oppressed people around the world during Trump, believed sanity had returned to the United States. In the previous few years they relaxed their vigilance. Whatever they really believed happened in Detroit, they accepted the administration’s explanation.

But as our government took increasingly bold steps to limit individual rights, some of those same governments had become alarmed. British prime minister Bix Dickens had expressed the concern of the UK when he publicly asked Wrightman to consider the consequences before taking actions to curtail civil liberties. Vice President Hunter had reassured Europe that these measures were temporary and would be removed once the threat had diminished. That all might change if I could get this evidence out. And if it raised doubt, the UN might be compelled to take some action. It could shatter these still-fragile alliances and might lead to censure, political isolation, even economic sanctions.

Once I started imagining the possibilities, I started to feel a little better. The weight of the entire Western world might be brought against Wrightman to force him to release all the political prisoners. Who knows, with enough support maybe Congress would show some balls. I could see it happening. Sure, it was only a glimmer, a flea on the labradoodle of life, but it was real. Well, it was possible. It was something. My mind transformed hope into excitement, which my body turned into adrenaline that my heart pumped through my body. My parts were all in on this one. I started sweating.

For any of that to happen, though, the evidence had to be irrefutable, it had to be conclusive, and I had to make it public. I was working it all out; I’d have to find out where Hack was. Get an answer from him. If he verified the graph … I was trying to figure out who had his address. I could go over …

“You okay there, Rol?” Charlie Fitzgerald asked loudly. I caught myself. I had gotten so into my fantasy that without realizing it I’d broken my personal speed record for lat pulldowns. The rapidly clanking weights had attracted Charlie’s attention.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking…”

“Be careful with that,” he joked. He rolled his eyes back and forth as if warning me to keep my thinking down.

“Right.” I eased back into a rhythm. I can close my eyes right this minute and be back in that gym. I can hear it, smell it. That was the first time I’d worked through the possibilities. Did I believe it? Probably not. But at that moment I needed it. Hope was the only weapon I had.

I didn’t kid myself. Big rewards require big risks. A government willing to kill its citizens to gain power, as I was certain Wrightman had done in Detroit, would do whatever was necessary to hold on to that power. Was I willing to take those risks? I considered myself a risk-taker but not a gambler—an odd combination. If I believed I could control the narrative by making my own decisions, I didn’t hold back. I had run into that building believing I was quick enough to get out. But if success depended on the roll of the dice or turning over a card, I was much less gung ho. I was the kind of guy who sat on 16 in blackjack and never put more than three hotels on Park Place.

I went to the office. Habit, mostly. I had no place else to go. The early morning streets were unnaturally quiet. A massive street cleaner moved like a square metal animal down the block, its circulating brushes spinning curb debris into the air. There were more soldiers and militia than people, looking bored. I walked past Jerry Stern’s spot over the grating. All traces of him—his shopping cart, blankets, cardboard signs—were gone; there was nothing to indicate he ever existed. He had been wiped away, “cleaned up,” in the new vernacular.

As I walked along, I was wary but not overly concerned. Mighty Chair was my all-access pass, its bulk making me invisible. No threat to anyone. I considered my options. Whatever steps I took had to be carefully planned. I couldn’t involve anyone else. Anyone specifically meaning Jenny. First thing I had to do … Cher interrupted my reverie: “Rollie, your mother is calling.”

Perfect. I have always admired my mother’s intuition. It seemed like every time I was busy trying to save the world, she would interrupt me. “Hi, Ma,” I said as cheerfully as I could manage.

“I’m worried about you. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

How many times had we had this same conversation? Oddly, her voice was reassuring. The country might be collapsing, we might be on the verge of becoming a police state, but all that mattered to her was that I was okay. “Honest, Mom, I’m fine.”

She hesitated, trying to decide if I meant it. Apparently I was fine, because she changed the subject. “Did you see what he did last night? Have you ever seen anything like that? Oh my god.”

I needed that laugh more than she would ever know.

The office was mostly empty when I got there. Frankie B. greeted me. He was standing at his own desk, putting his Trump-on-his-haunches pencil holder into an already overstuffed backpack. “Hey, Rol,” he said. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. Apparently my health was the question of the day.

He stopped packing. “So what are you going to do?”

I’d thought about that. I was going to work as long as possible. “I’m going to start with a reaction piece, I think. See how people…”

Frankie looked at me as if I were an alien. “You’re kidding, right?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Rollie, we’re done here. This…” He indicated the office. “We’re done. These fuckers aren’t going to let us publish anymore. I just came in to collect my stuff before they lock the doors.”

Back in the sandbox, when I was getting shit together to meet the fan, I was always calm. I knew the risks, I knew my skills. I had learned how to channel anxiety into positive energy. That was in my Rollie 1.0 days. But as I looked at Frankie, I could feel the fear in the air. This time fear had control. “What are you doing, Frank?”

He scratched his neck. “Whatever I have to, I guess. All that crap I wrote about Wrightman? Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea.” He looked up and yelled at the ceiling, “If anybody’s listening, as of right now I have always loved my president!”

We shared a hollow laugh. Then he continued: “Working here, you and me, we’ve got to be on one of those lists. So Amy and I, we’re just gonna … we’re taking a little vacation and seeing how it all shakes out. Who knows, Rol, maybe we’re overreacting.” And then he broke into a big Frankie B. Goode smile. “Maybe those soldiers in the street really are there to protect us.” He cleared his throat, then pointed at his desk. “I gotta … you know.” He threw a few final items into his backpack and zipped it closed. He looked around at the mostly empty desks. “Well…” he started, inhaling deeply, his shoulders rising as if the breath had filled them. Then he caught his emotion and brought it under control. Unable to speak, he shrugged, waved, and started toward the door. Then stopped. He had one more thought. He walked over to me, leaned down, and kissed me on my cheek. “It’s been great, Rollie. I’m proud of us. We did some really good stuff here. Be careful, huh?”

He stood tall and forced himself to smile. The last thing he did was pick up an empty Dunkin’ cup and add it to the tower. A dribble of cold coffee snaked down the tower and pooled on my desk. I didn’t bother cleaning it up. The tower was eight cups tall, and we both knew it would never get any higher. “You too, Frankie,” I said, forcing a smile even I didn’t believe. “Give Amy a kiss for me, please.”

As I packed, several other people trickled in and out, but the background music of a newsroom at work was gone, replaced by a muffled silence interrupted occasionally by whispered conversations as people said goodbye or made last-minute phone calls. I shook hands, kissed back, said goodbye, made vague promises to maintain contact, and offered optimistic predictions, but even as I did, I couldn’t help feeling like I was in the middle of one of those overly dramatic movie scenes in which government personnel are racing to clean up files as the enemy reaches the gates of the city. The Pro was done.

I finally ran out of things to do. The truth is, I had been stalling, waiting, hoping that Howie would come in. He would have been there if it was possible. “Cher,” I said, dreading this, “call Howie’s home phone.” It rang several times and I was ready to hang up when Karen answered. “Are you okay?” I asked.

I liked and admired Karen, but she had never struck me as an especially tough person. So the resolve in her voice surprised me. “Yeah, I am.”

“Where is he?”

I heard her take one deep breath. “We don’t know.” There were three cops, she said. Howie asked to see their warrant, and they laughed at him. “They were polite, Rollie. It wasn’t any tough guy stuff. One of them even apologized to me and said he felt really bad about this, but he had to follow orders. They let him pack a bag.”

“They didn’t say anything about where they were taking him?” It was a silly question, but I couldn’t help asking it.

“I’ll be notified, they said.” I imagined Howie being shoved into the back seat of a dark late-model sedan, probably making some kind of “can we stop at McDonald’s for detention?” joke to the cops. “I don’t know what to do, Rollie. Isn’t there somebody you can call?”

I hesitated. How many times had I been asked that question? And often there was someone I knew who knew somebody who had a friend. But the new answer was, not anymore. Calling somebody with enough juice to help? I almost laughed at that thought. That was so eight hours ago. It was difficult to accept the fact that the laws Americans had lived by for nearly 250 years no longer applied. “Temporarily suspended.” Right. The traditional ways of dealing with the system were done, finished. Realistically there was nothing I could do, but I wanted to hold out hope. “I’ll make some calls,” I said with as much conviction as I could manage. “You never know.”

“I’ve tried to get hold of Jenny to see if Martha could do anything. I called and I texted, but I’ve haven’t heard from her. You know where she is?”

“No.” Calmly, dispassionately, no. “I got some texts from her telling me things were crazy up there. Soon as we hang up, I’ll try again.” I shifted into the most positive tone I could manage. It actually was so good even I almost believed it. “Look, Karen, if you hear anything call me right away, okay? There’s got to be something we can do.”

While Cher was dialing Jenny’s cell, I glanced at the mess covering my desk: the scattered piles of printed pages; the cryptic notes and phone numbers I’d jotted down on torn slips of paper and yellow and blue Post-its; the rubber bands wound around pencils; the loose paper clips and promotional pens that long ago had dried up; the twisted charging cords from discarded devices; a dull scissors and a rusting stapler that I don’t think I’d ever used. It was a snapshot of a hectic life, my second life, when the story on which I was working mattered more than anything else in my world. It was residue from the hundreds of stories I had written or edited, notes for stories I was reporting, ideas for stories I intended to develop “when I had time.” It was all clutter, but it was my clutter: half a roll of clear Scotch tape, a collection of newspaper stories clipped together, a strip of undeveloped negatives from my sister, seven lucky pennies I’d found lying heads-up and I’d taped to the desk, my Rangers challenge coin in a corner where it was the first thing I’d see every morning, and my tower of cups. I tried to freeze the sight in my mind, inscribe it in my memory so deeply I would never forget it. Rollie 2.0 was over. I would never be in this office again. The record would stand forever at twenty-eight Dunkin’ cups.

I think even Cher was surprised when Jenny answered after three rings. Her heavy breathing and the background noise made it obvious she was moving in a crowd. “It’s crazy here,” she told me. “I haven’t had a second. Are you okay?” There was a wisp of fear in her voice.

“I’m good. They picked up Howie. Karen’s been trying to call you. You think Martha can do something?”

“Excuse me,” she said to somebody. Then she was back. “Oh god, no. Not Howie. Yeah, I’ll call Karen. But nobody knows what any of this means yet. There’re all these people carrying guns walking around. We’re on our way over to the Capitol for a special session. Wrightman wants some kind of Conscience of Congress resolution supporting him.”

Fuckers. Of course they would. It was a loyalty test. A way of rooting out the opposition. “What’s she going to do?” I asked. Then before Jenny could respond, I said firmly, “Tell her she has to vote for it.” This wasn’t the place to make a stand.

Jenny laughed at the thought. “Right. I’m going to tell Martha what to do. Not in this world. Look, sweetheart, I’m sorry, but I have to go. Where will you be later?”

Where was I going to be later? I had no answer to that question. “Home, I guess,” I said. Then added, “I guess.”

I stuffed as much as possible in my backpack and Mighty Chair’s various pockets and carry bags, including my burner phones, tapes, and the original materials Brain had given me. Using my fingernail to scrape away the tape, I lifted my challenge coin, tapped it twice on the desk—once for my fellows and once for those who didn’t make it home—and dropped it in my breast pocket. I wondered if I should take the time to erase the data and emails from my computer, then smiled at the thought. By now they had all the information they needed. But just in case, I picked up the stapler and finally put it to use, slamming it as hard as I could into my computer’s hard drive—three times, four, five, slamming it again and again, until the whole side of the tower was caved in.

There were still two people in the office, cleaning up and closing down, when I was ready to leave. I wished them well and meant it, then picked up my cowbell and rang it one last time, slowly and mournfully. I put it in my backpack and left. I didn’t look back.

It was still early afternoon, but the building was late-night quiet. No one was waiting at the elevator bank. I reached out to press the call button, then stopped; I left my index finger hanging in midair as I thought about it. In this new world it made sense to pause and consider the possible consequences before taking even the most ordinary action. My paranoia kicked in.

In that instant, Rollie 3.0 was born. It was as if my brain suddenly kicked into a new gear.

Was I really in any danger? Let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t sell a life insurance policy to myself. I had to be on somebody’s naughty list. I’d earned it. Dick and Frannie were probably salivating. My guess was they hadn’t picked me up in the first sweep because they believed being stuck in a chair limited my options. To them, I was a permanently sitting fuck. Where was I going to roll? So after collecting all the people who might scatter, they would come back for the easy pickings. I had to smile at that thought. Being underestimated definitely had its advantages.

Instead of pressing that elevator button, I walked around the corner and took the freight elevator to the subbasement. It was surprisingly brightly lit. Cardboard boxes of cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and fluorescent bulbs—whatever was needed to keep an office building humming—were piled neatly against the walls. As the doors opened, I heard voices. Then I saw two young women; they jumped when I emerged from the elevator. “You scared me,” one of them said, the hand holding her cigarette pressed against her chest. Clearly they had sneaked down there to have a smoke and were relieved to see who I wasn’t.

“Ladies,” I said, smiling pleasantly as I moved past them. They stepped back to make room for me, then resumed their conversation. The basement was well-organized and surprisingly immaculate. Management was taking good care of it. It smelled of slightly damp cement, cardboard, and cigarettes. I made a note to myself that if I ever needed a place to hide, this would work. The last place anyone would look for me was …

Wow. That was quick. It had been only hours since Wrightman’s announcement, and already I was compiling a list of safe places.

The custodial door opened onto a rear alley that stretched the entire length of the block. Rather than steps, a cement ramp sloped very gently up to street level, obviously to make it easy access for maintenance to dolly supplies in and garbage out. That didn’t surprise me. Most large buildings have rear ramps, but those people who don’t need them don’t think about it. In particular the Dicks and Frannies.

The alley was wide enough to allow small trucks and vans to make deliveries. It was lined with green metal dumpsters bursting with small mountains of black and clear plastic garbage bags. I followed it for about forty yards until I reached a narrow passage between buildings, just wide enough for Mighty Chair to squeeze through onto the street.

I eased out, as if I were a car nosing into a busy intersection. I looked to my left and sat there for several minutes. There were several soldiers on the block, but no one seemed to be paying any special attention to my building. I took a hard right and picked up speed, leaving the Pro in Mighty Chair’s rearview screen.

In those few hours, the sidewalks had come alive; in fact they seemed even more crowded than a typical downtown weekday lunch hour. But instead of the usual businesspeople, it was an odd juxtaposition of armed troops wearing modified combat gear, D.C. cops in their formal riot gear, members of different militias wearing colorful uniforms and matching armbands, and casually dressed spectators who had come downtown to see the show for themselves. The spectacle of a young couple wheeling a stroller past militia members with automatic weapons strapped on their backs was startling. Rather than Washington, D.C., on a glorious early summer day, it felt about as gay and carefree as the Unter den Linden in 1938.

It served my needs, though. Chair disappeared into the mix like a green pea in mashed potatoes.

I moved slowly and steadily, trying not to draw attention to myself. I couldn’t afford that, not with Brain’s evidence in my backpack. Most people focused in front of them, safely preventing any type of human connection. Those few people who met my eyes smiled sympathetically or nodded condescendingly, then stepped out of the way, as if doing me a favor. Occasionally someone recognized me from TV; I wasn’t especially memorable, but Mighty Chair had his own fan club. He was by far the most famous wheelchair in America. (Well, to be fair, also the only famous wheelchair.) When that happened, I smiled and nodded, and before they could stop me, I raised my eyebrows in frustration and pointed ahead as if I were late to an appointment and couldn’t stop.

There didn’t seem to be much interaction between the troops and civilians, although if four or five people stood together for more than a few seconds, a cop or militia would ask them to move on. It all seemed casually organized; some of the militia were posing proudly for photographs or selfies on certain streets, positioning themselves so the Capitol was visible in the background, while others sternly ordered people not to take pictures. But all of them shared a common mission: There would be no demonstrations on the streets of the Capitol.

I suspected similar scenes were taking place on the streets of every major American city. I couldn’t confirm it, because media coverage of demonstrations had been specifically forbidden to prevent protests from spreading.

While I waited on a corner for the light to change, an army corporal stopped next to me. We glanced at each other and smiled in acknowledgment. As he turned away, he said out of the side of his mouth, “This is total bullshit. What the fuck are we doing here?”

Rather than saying anything, I reached into my shirt pocket and showed him my challenge coin.

The soldier looked at it and rattled a supportive fist. “Hooah!” he said, then walked away.

Look, I admit it, I was being way overly cautious. I wasn’t even a small fish in a big pond. In reality I was probably more like one of those plastic deep-sea divers blowing air bubbles out of a helmet at the bottom of an aquarium. I wasn’t especially valuable, I’d served a minor purpose, and I wasn’t going anywhere. The reality was that having to deal with Chair probably made detaining me more of a hassle than I was worth. But the government didn’t know what I had, or more accurately what I might have. Being me, though, just in case I looped around the parking garage before going inside. I always paid attention to my paranoia; it probably had saved my life on patrol several times.

Van was parked on the first level. The once comfortable whir of the van’s panel door sliding open and the ramp extending now seemed unusually loud and threatening; I climbed inside and got locked down as quickly and quietly as possible.

Van had been outfitted to allow me to live in it for at least a couple of days, more if I conserved resources. I wanted to be free to travel, and with the spotty availability of accessible hotel and motel rooms, I needed a bedroom (and bathroom) I could take with me. Y had designed and built it. It had all the comforts of home, if home was a space slightly smaller than a cargo container but with less charm. The decor was American rudimentary: On one side panel I had hung a print of Munch’s The Scream, and directly across from that, a poster of a kitten dressed as a ballerina. The facilities could run on batteries for a full day, which could be at least partially recharged through two solar panels on the roof, but also could be hooked up to water and waste lines at campsites.

I used one of my burners to call Hack. I couldn’t put it off any longer. “What’s happening?” I said with exaggerated bonhomie, not identifying myself. “Missed you this morning. Just checking that with everything going on, you still want to work out tomorrow morning?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Sure, why not? Be there or be square.”

“Great.” Then, as if an afterthought, “Oh hey, do me a favor. Don’t forget to bring those insurance papers you wanted to show me.”

After ending the call, I took the Sim card out of the phone to prevent the law from pinpointing my location. This is really weird, I thought. I’m on the run. Me, on the run. How absurd is that? Other than the techniques I’d been taught in Special Ops training, none of which had been conducted from a permanent sitting position, everything I knew about escape and evasion had come from novels and movies. An entire entertainment industry had been built around that concept. I had taken out the battery because that’s what Jason Bourne would have done to “stay off the grid.”

Stay off the grid? That’s how my go-to experts, Robert Ludlum and Lee Child, might have referred to it. I was about to find out how much they actually knew about it. As long as it didn’t include jumping out of helicopters or beating up six tattooed guys, I probably could handle it. Mostly I had to operate on common sense. “Adapt and adjust” to changing conditions, my instructors at Bragg had drilled into us, “adapt and adjust” being military speak for “make it up as you go along.” “Think out of the box,” they had told us, although more accurately in my case, it was think out of Mighty Chair. I moved to the back of Van for several hours, watching the battery-powered TV. Most of the coverage included footage of ordinary people doing ordinary things. See, these new laws aren’t a big deal. Just go ahead with your life. Your newly safer normal life.

When I was finally ready to move, I put the card back in the phone and called Jen. She was still operating at NASCAR speed. An emergency session of Congress had been scheduled for later that evening, she told me. All kinds of rumors were floating around. She was going to spend the night on a cot in the office; the Hill was sort of locked down. She did not say whether or not she had a choice. “Listen,” I told her, adopting my new default position, the assumption that the phone had ears, “there’s a problem with the air-conditioning in the apartment.” Meaning don’t go there. “I’m getting ready to park Chair for the night.” Meaning I was going to stay in Van.

Our conversation was mostly smoke, hiding any real information. We ended with “love you” and a promise to keep in touch.

It was dark outside when I finally left the garage. What rush hour there was had ended, and traffic had thinned. One lane in either direction was closed for military traffic. Every few minutes a Humvee ferrying troops would speed by. Cher cautioned me when I went more than five miles over the listed speed limit. When I got outside the city, feeling very Bournish, I tossed the burner out the window into the brush.

I drove to a McDonald’s in Bethesda, about two miles down Rockville Pike from Walter Reed, one that no one in my phone book knew about. Well, it was a McDonald’s, everybody knew that, but not my connection to it. This was one of the first places I’d gone on my own during my recuperation. There had been no Mighty Chair, my chair was the manual Rollie-wheel drive, so just getting there represented significant progress for me. I went there often enough to get to know the manager, a Mexican immigrant named César Hernández. I walked in one night as three guys were giving a double amputee from the hospital a hard time, grabbing his food and tossing it back and forth. When César tried to stop them, two of them turned on him, knocking him to the floor and holding him down. The third guy went for the cash registers, their real purpose in starting the fight.

There were six people in the restaurant, but none of them made any move to help. Then a pretty amazing thing happened. My instincts kicked in and I reacted. Picking up as much speed as I could (it was a confined space, so it wasn’t much), I slammed the chair into one of them from behind. That sent him tripping forward headfirst into the soda dispenser. I spun the chair around and leveled a Bruce Lee arm block right into the second thug’s midsection. He doubled over and I hammered down on the back of his head. He hit the ground; I must’ve hit some nerve because he started flopping around like a landed fish. By then, the other customers had jumped in and grabbed the third guy before he could get away. Sirens blasting, the gendarmes arrived a few minutes later.

Everything had happened so quickly it took my thoughts several minutes to catch up to my actions. It was the complete battlefield experience: act first, think later. Depend on your training. I had no idea where that reaction had come from. But in those few moments I had glimpsed the possibilities of my new life.

To show his appreciation César had made his store the most accessible McDonald’s in the country, good enough to earn a cover story in Franchise Times magazine. But he went even further, installing power, water, internet access, and waste hookups in the back of his parking lot for two vans or properly equipped SUVs, then limiting its use to wounded vets and their families. Both spots were open when I got there. I backed in, safe for the night.

Van wasn’t especially comfortable, but it would suffice. Once I was settled in, I opened up my tablet. Remembering Brain’s warning about browsing patterns being detectable, I went first to Bustle, the leading site for young women, then to Popular Science, thereby fitting no known demographic. I didn’t bother looking at the most prominent news sites. At this point, they wouldn’t be helpful; if they were still up, they had made the necessary compromises. They would be spewing bullshit. Instead I began searching for the myriad pirate broadcasting sites. All it took to go live was a handheld camera and big cojones. With some luck I’d be able to find one of these picture pirates.

While I was searching, a text message popped up on the screen. It had been sent by Diogenes, someone from the meeting reaching out to the others. It read: PopUpCongress.org. Several seconds later this message disappeared. The resistance was starting to figure out how to communicate safely under the new restrictions.

That site opened quickly. I was looking at the floor of the House of Representatives. Someone up in the gallery was livestreaming the emergency session. A whispered voice explained that the speaker had introduced the resolution of support for Wrightman. The camera obviously was hidden from view; they had gotten so small, it could have been disguised as a brooch or even a pen. It scanned the entire chamber: Law enforcement officers stood against the wall both on the floor and in the gallery. Whoever was narrating this whispered they were Capitol Police, U.S. Marshals, and Homeland Security agents. I leaned as close to the screen as I could trying to pick out Jenny; she had to be there, but I didn’t spot her.

The roll was being called. Other than several pages moving in the aisles, it could have been a still photograph. Although roll call votes normally were recorded and tallied electronically, in this instance the Clerk of the House was conducting it in a far more dramatic fashion. As each member’s name was called, he or she stood and verbally cast their vote. Members who voted yea followed that vote with a few words expressing their loyalty to America and the president, then sat down. But two members loudly voted nay. One of them, Representative Amy Bowers (D-New Mexico), told the House that this was the single most shameful moment in the history of the United States Congress. That was met with several boos; one unidentified person shouted she was a “terrorist sympathizer” and she should “sit down and shut up.” After casting their no votes, both members remained standing as two Capitol Police officers came down the aisle and took them into custody. They went silently, although as Bowers was escorted off the floor, she defiantly raised her right clenched fist high in the air.

The clerk got to Mrs. McDonnell. Martha stood to her full height and turned slowly around the entire room. Oh no, I thought, please, please don’t do it. Her voice resonated through history as she said, “The stain that is on this House will never be erased. Shame on all of you.” She faced the podium. “Mr. Speaker, I vote no. Never.”

The House was absolutely silent. Then someone coughed. As two officers walked down the aisle, I heard what sounded like a sob. The officers stopped at Martha’s row. Several members stepped back to allow them to reach her. One of those officers put his hand on her elbow to guide her, but she angrily shook it off and glared at him. She said something inaudible to him. She was going on her own terms. She reached the aisle and without waiting for the officers turned to her right and walked to the top.

It was an act of courage equal to anything I had ever seen on the battlefield.

As she did, a spectator shouted from the gallery, “Cowards!” Everyone on the floor turned and looked up. Several members pointed at someone, eerily reminiscent of those men on the balcony with Martin Luther King pointing in the direction of the shooter. Then I heard what sounded like a brief scuffle and some shouting, although whatever was taking place was not shown.

The roll call resumed. There was one more nay vote before the stream wobbled, then abruptly ended. There was no way of knowing if it had been intentionally shut down or the streamer had been discovered. It disappeared without any explanation.

I spent the next hour searching the net for any believable reports, while enjoying a bologna sandwich I had defrosted in the microwave. The news sites were still reporting the details of the assassination attempt and the frantic search for whoever was responsible, the tragic backstories of the victims, and the “surprisingly widespread support” for the government’s temporary crackdown on dissidents. One effervescent young woman earnestly told a reporter, “We’re either going to be America or we’re not. This has to stop.”

All the sites repeatedly ran footage of staffers cheering the clearly shaken president as he returned to the White House.

I didn’t sleep. For some reason I started thinking about the last dog I’d owned, or who had owned me, depending on whose point of view you believed. Chuck Waggin’ was a mixed breed with a visible abundance of retriever. Old Chuck had been a loyal wing-dog through college and grad school, as well as after Fort Bragg, dying in my arms soon after we celebrated our fourteenth year together. I loved that dog. He’d been my anchor—the grinning, tail-wagging friend waiting for me at the front door whether I’d gone to the store or to the desert, making every place we stayed together our home. On nights like this one, when I was getting ready to hit the road, I was glad there was no Chuck. I wasn’t certain I would have been able to leave him behind, even knowing they were looking for me.

Jenny would understand. I opened my eyes and lay in the dark thinking about her. She knew those few possessions that mattered to me and would go to the apartment and pack them away. I desperately wanted to call her to find out how she was coping and what she knew about Martha, but I couldn’t do it from a stationary location. I’ll call her in the morning, I decided, soon as I got what I needed from Hack, when I was on the road.

Jenny would understand.