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(Seattle, Tuesday, May 6, 2014)
Taking Angie to a gun range turned out to be a lot of fun, Mac found. And she had a good eye. Her upper-body strength was a problem, as was typical for women, but still she was better than most of the women he’d taught to shoot over the years.
Most important, she liked it. And when she finally hit the target (not the bullseye, but the target) she’d done this little victory dance that made him grin at her. And take her gun away before she shot one of them.
He let her use the two weapons he was planning on taking, his Glock, and a long-range rifle, a Remington 700 .270. Her hands were too small for the Glock’s grip. She could use it, but her hands got tired really quickly. He considered what he had that might work better for her. He had a Ruger .380 auto that was lightweight and small because it was designed for concealed carry. As far as the Remington went, he wanted her to try it, but he wasn’t going to saddle her with carrying a long-range rifle.
“I’ll let you borrow a pistol to carry in your camera bag,” he said. “But you’re not licensed for concealed carry, so I won’t hand it over until we’re on the trail. But you should have something.”
She nodded. “I could learn to like this,” she said laughing. “And isn’t that a hoot for a pro-gun control liberal like me?”
Mac shrugged and smiled at her. “I’m pro-gun regulations,” he reminded her. “And I’ve got a big enough arsenal to set up a gun shop.”
She looked at him with a half-smile. “I remember you going nose-to-nose with Norton on that,” she said. “It got me one of my best shots of him. But I wasn’t sure you meant it. Seemed like either the arsenal or the pro-gun-laws stance had to be you just pushing his buttons.”
He shrugged. “There’s nothing more dangerous than amateurs with guns,” he said. “In a confrontation? Somebody dies, usually the amateur. I actually liked Andy Malloy’s gun certification program. Wanted to do a feature on it, but Janet nixed it. Said him pulling a gun on me indicated that maybe he wasn’t the most stable person in the world.”
She giggled. “And that hadn’t occurred to you?”
“Lots of people have wanted to shoot me, babe,” Mac said. “Doesn’t make them unstable, just angry.”
“I’m with Janet,” she said.
“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “But when this is over, I may toss the idea at some gun range owners I know and see if one of them is interested in doing something similar. One who hasn’t pulled a gun on me.”
She laughed. “Can I buy you a drink — Mountain Dew — as thanks?”
“Sure,” Mac said, as he put his weapons in the lockbox in the back of his 4-Runner. “Let’s go to that Mexican place you introduced me to. They had good nachos.”
There were other staff there, a collection of people from across the newsroom departments, photography, and even a stray from advertising. Mac let Angie buy him his Mountain Dew and then he bought nachos to share. He had to admit he preferred this group with its diversity more than he did the Special Projects men’s club vibe. But then he’d always prefer to hang with a group with women in it, he thought amused. The diversity thing stuck with him as he gave Angie a ride home.
“You’re thinking awfully hard,” she observed with a giggle. She’d had a fair amount of sangria, he noted.
“You know in movies how you always know the bad guys because they all look alike? Usually Aryan white men — short hair, black overcoats? And the good guys are a collection of diverse people: men, women, people of color, a couple of odd balls?”
She laughed some more. “Yes, and?”
“That’s the difference between this newsroom crowd and the Special Projects happy hour,” he said.
She looked at him for a moment, and then she patted him on the cheek. “Yes,” she said simply. “Women aren’t welcome there. I don’t know what they’d do if a black reporter joined them. We try to welcome everyone — hell, there was an advertising rep there tonight!”
“Says something about the kind of journalism they practice,” Mac said. Or wanted to practice, he amended.
“Probably does,” she agreed, as she slipped out of the 4-Runner. “Thanks Mac, I had fun.”
He waited until she got into the apartment building, and then he went home to spend some quality time with his new Facebook friends. He rolled his eyes.
Wednesday morning, there was a note taped to his computer from the other police reporter, Seth Conte: Rodriguez wants you to call him.
Mac frowned. Rodriguez had his phone numbers. All of them. Why was he passing notes through another reporter?
He made all of his blotter calls, typed up the stories, and filed them with Janet. Then he called Rodriguez.
“Wanted to check in with you about those two domestic violence cases with the arsenals,” Mac said. “Any updates?”
There was a pause. “You got time to come by? I’d rather answer that question in person. Dunbar might have something to contribute,” he said.
“Give me 30 minutes,” Mac said, already heading out the door. He could walk it faster than he could repark.
He liked walking in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. This had been where he and his friends hung out in his teen years during the evening and into the night. Thinking they were cool, tough. His grin was a bit twisted as he thought about those days. Maybe Toby was due a call. He seemed to be on his mind lately.
The police station was less than a mile from Examiner’s offices, tucked up under I-5. He had left his backpack at the office, carrying a notebook and a pen. He’d forgotten once, and brought the backpack along, setting off the security alarms when he went through. The cops had not been amused to find a weapon at the bottom of the bag — in spite of his license to carry concealed — and he’d had to have Rodriguez come down and vouch for him. Rodriguez had grumpily done so and called him a dumb shit reporter. He couldn’t even argue.
So, the backpack stayed tucked under his desk, and he passed through the security check with just a nod from the cop who was standing there.
Dunbar was in Rodriguez’ office when he knocked on the door frame.
“Come in and close the door,” Rodriguez said. Mac complied, and sat down in the only vacant chair. Obviously, meetings didn’t happen very often in Rodriguez’ office.
“So, what’s up? And why didn’t you call me direct?” Mac asked. He hadn’t updated Rodriguez on his weekend either, he realized.
Dunbar tossed him a thumb drive and he caught it.
“Didn’t want a record of me reaching out to a reporter,” Rodriguez said. “Saw Conte, told him. So, here’s the deal. Joe, here, did a records search. You’ve got the result, in part because your use of the term arsenal made the search possible. We looked for cases in the last year where that term or gun cache or gun stash came up.”
Mac looked at the thumb drive with a raised eyebrow. “And how many did you find?”
“Fifteen,” Joe Dunbar said, quietly. None of his usual banter. No jokes.
“Fifteen arsenals? What kinds of cases?”
“Mostly domestic violence,” Dunbar said. “A few weird ones, like the burglary. But mostly, cops getting called in on a DV call and finding the guy had a room full of guns.”
Mac was silent for a moment. He couldn’t decide if he was appalled at the number or thought it was too few. “I’m surprised it’s so low to be honest,” Mac said. “Let me tell you about my weekend.”
The two men absorbed what he told them.
“I think it would be interesting to run a similar search in the divorce and child custody cases, Mac said slowly. “I bet we’d turn up a whole bunch more.”
Dunbar nodded. “Don’t know that I can do that,” he admitted. “But you probably have someone at the newspaper who can.”
Mac nodded. “Maybe,” he said, thinking of the Special Project guys. Would they run it for him? Or blow it off because it was about women? And wasn’t that an ugly thought to pop up about colleagues. Maybe Mike Brewster?
“Norton sounds like a piece of work,” Rodriguez observed.
Mac wished he’d brought one of Angie’s photos. “My photog said he had set up a persona, the John Wayne one, and then when you got past it, and saw the jock who just drifted into law enforcement you thought you’d discovered the real Pete Norton and you didn’t look any further. But when I pushed his buttons and he got angry? There’s a coldly intelligent man in there with a wide streak of cruelty.”
“And yet he believes in that constitutional sheriff’s bullshit?” Dunbar protested.
Mac shrugged. “He believes he’s the ultimate power in the county. That no one can question him, or gainsay him. The constitutional sheriff thing just props that up. Lends a bit of credibility. I’m not sure he believes in anything except Pete Norton.”
“And you’re going out on one of their survivalist weekends,” Rodriguez said. “That’s not wise or smart — not that it has stopped you in the past.”
Mac laughed. “Get this, Andy Malloy told Anderson he wouldn’t be going. Malloy is the sane one of this group.”
“Malloy wasn’t insane, just racist. Extremely racist. And trigger happy,” Rodriguez said.
Both of the younger men looked at him with identical expressions of disbelief.
“He pulled a gun on me because I asked about the Sensei,” Mac pointed out.
“Well, OK, maybe that does add up to being on the edge of insanity,” Rodriguez conceded. “But he likes his life now. He’s running a gun range, hangs with the local cops. Probably 90 percent of his membership are white, and 70 percent are men. He’s making decent money, I’d guess, and life is good. Why risk it to go play survivalist? He knows a clusterfuck coming when he sees it. And you should think about that.”
Mac nodded in agreement with Rodriguez’ assessment. And wasn’t that rich? Malloy was his canary in the coal mine for trouble ahead. But he shrugged. “Can’t not go,” he said.
“Why? Because of the story or because you’re too macho to back down from what was essentially a challenge from Norton?” Dunbar asked.
Mac rolled his eyes. “What would you do?” he asked. “You’d be right there, marching to the guillotine with me.” If he had a kindred spirit at the SPD it was probably Dunbar, God help them all.
Dunbar laughed. “Got me there,” he said.
Rodriguez scowled at the both. “Well, if you two cowboys would get out of my office, I might get some work done,” he said with a growl.
As they left, Rodriguez said, “Mac? Be careful. There isn’t anyone who can come to your rescue in Skagit Valley.”
Mac hesitated, then he nodded and left, shutting the door behind him.
While he was at the SPD he made the rounds. He stopped in to talk to the PIO, the public information officer. Stopped by the desks of a couple of others he knew. And then he was back out in the sunshine.
He looked at his phone. A text from Shorty telling him to come by after work. And one from Janet that said, call me.
He found a bench, sat down, and called Janet back. He didn’t like talking on the phone to begin with, especially since he spent two hours every morning making a dozen calls to law enforcement and first responders. And he most certainly didn’t want to have any kind of involved conversation while walking. He saw businessmen who did that, thinking it showed how important and in demand they were. To him they looked like assholes who danced to someone else’s tune, and wreaked havoc as they walked, causing people to have to dodge around them.
One of the funniest things he’d seen lately was when one of them encountered a small yappy dog on a leash whose owner pulled one way, and the rat-dog pulled the other, forming as nice a trip wire as any Marine could have set. And the suit had face-planted. Couldn’t even catch himself because he had that damn phone to his ear. Mac had laughed himself silly. He hadn’t been the only one.
He grinned at the memory and dialed his boss.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Got the information back on Norton’s backstory,” she said. “Can you talk?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“So, you were right. First, Norton has a record in California. He was arrested several times for verbal attacks on gays and minorities. No convictions, he’d just turned 18, I think, so there was probably a juvenile record. Found an arrest photo though. He was a damned Skinhead, Mac. The whole look, even. I suspect if you saw him stripped down, he’d have a few tats. But he looks like he was savvy enough to keep them from showing in clothes. No piercings either. So, a weekend hate warrior,” Janet said with disgust.
“And then, what? He decides he wants to enlist, can’t because of the record, and re-invents himself as a college student?” Mac asked.
“Bingo. Except, he did enlist, and didn’t make it through boot camp,” she said. “They washed him out. Still doing some digging there on why.”
“Probably got spotted doing more of that crap, even just mouthing off,” Mac speculated. “Marine Corps doesn’t put up with that shit, especially if they catch it early. Not those who are overt about it anyway.”
“Could be,” Janet agreed. “I’ll have my guy search the area around wherever he was stationed.”
“San Diego,” Mac said absently, trying to think if he knew of anyone who would talk. “It’s the boot camp for the West Coast. So, when are we talking? He’s what 42?”
“43, it looks like,” Janet said. “So, he would have been 18 in 1989.”
Mac was thinking about it. He’d gone through San Diego in 2003.
“You coming back in?” Janet asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got more interview calls to make,” he said morosely. For a guy who didn’t like phone conversations he’d chosen the wrong damn field.
But once back in the office, he headed down the hallway to the Special Projects team’s offices and found Mike Brewster. Of all the guys he’d met — including their boss — Mike had seemed to be the most approachable.
Mac knocked on the door, and Mike waved him in. “Don’t see you down this way much,” Mike said.
Mac shrugged. “Got a question, and it occurred to me you could probably figure it out,” he said. “I want to know how often a reference to gun stashes, gun collections, arsenals, comes up in divorce and child custody proceedings in the state. And whether its increased over the last, say, 18 months? And are there hot spots?”
Mike’s gaze sharpened. “This for a story you’re working on?” he asked. “When do you want it by?”
Mac nodded, then considered the second question. “I’m headed back to Skagit for part of this story over the weekend,” he said slowly. “While it would be nice to have before I go, I really won’t need it until I get back. So, Monday?”
Mike jerked, and leaned back in his chair. “Jesus, Mac,” he said. “Usually a question like this would be a project for the month. Are all your stories on that tight a turn-around?”
Mac frowned. “Most of my stories run the day they happen or the next,” he said puzzled. “I’ve been working on this one now for almost two weeks. But that’s pretty rare. Haven’t you ever done beat reporting?”
“My first job in journalism. It was a small daily newspaper, and it was grueling. You know, where you go to the city council meeting one evening, and write it up for the paper the next day?” he said. “That’s why I went back for my master’s in data management. Then Steve hired me here. I guess I assumed on a big paper like this, beat reporters got more time than on a small paper.”
“Didn’t you learn that immediacy is one of the characteristics of what news is?” Mac asked. “And now with the web? It’s not just ‘write it up the next day’. Our city reporter often files a web brief on a council meeting before the meeting is even over.”
The two men looked at each other for a moment, and Mac wondered if the gulf of experience was too vast to bridge. Mike tapped his fingers on his desk. “Let me work on it,” he said at last. “Tell me more about your story.”
Mac summarized what was going on.
“Hundreds of guns? What for?” Mike asked, obviously startled.
“And that’s the question everyone wants to know the answer to,” Mac said grimly. “A cop I know ran this question on their own domestic violence calls over the last six months. Came up with 15. He found that troubling. Seemed low to me.”
Mike jotted something down on his notepad. “I’ll rerun that query using the same parameters and terms I use for the civil docket,” he muttered. Then he looked up. “How much do you know about data searches?”
Mac shrugged. “Got a friend who makes a lot of money doing data mining,” he said. “With him? When he goes off into jargon, I just nod my head as if I understand. Figured I’d do the same with you.”
Mike laughed. “Why bring this to me instead of him then?”
“He’s been helping me,” Mac said. “I’m learning social media this week.” Mike laughed again at his sour tone. “But Shorty’s not a reporter. And it seemed to me that a reporter might see things in this that a data analyst wouldn’t.”
“Good enough,” Mike said. “I’ve never tried this tight a turn-around. Let me work on it. You coming to happy hour tomorrow?”
Mac nodded. “Thought I would,” he said.
“I should be able to give you something by then,” Mike said.
Mac escaped to his end of the building where people moved faster. Hell, we even talk faster, he thought. And louder. He relaxed. The Special Projects unit made him itch.
At the end of his work day, Mac went to the gym for a workout. Nothing better than the treadmill to consider what he’d learned. And he had an hour before Shorty would get home from school. He shook his head. Shorty, the math teacher.
But then, people shook their heads over Mac, the cop reporter, too.
He’d tracked down an old drill sergeant that he knew. The man didn’t recall a Pete Norton. “Skinhead? Might be the first guy to ever have to grow his hair longer to be a Marine,” he cracked. “Let me do some checking.”
The coroner’s office would release the results on Friday. But it wasn’t the first body they’d gotten from the national park that looked like this, the assistant coroner said. “I would expect the conclusions will be the same too,” he said, willing to chat a bit.
“How many bodies?” Mac had asked.
“Four? Five? In the last two years that I’ve worked here,” he said. “And they all were like this, no obvious signs of cause of death. Severe dehydration, a lot of superficial bruising and scratches, post-mortem damage. We’ve ruled them natural causes. Dehydration is usually what kills a lost hiker.”
“Post-mortem damage?” Mac asked curiously.
The man hesitated. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Some animal predation. But some? It’s weird. It’s as if they stumbled down a hillside, died near the top, and then continued to tumble down, accumulating damage. Off the record? It feels more like someone tossed them down the hill after they died. But we can’t tell how they died.”
Mac could hear the frustration in the man’s voice. He was silent for a moment trying to figure out how that worked into his hunted scenario. But then, these could be the men who almost got away, he thought. So, herded over a cliff?
“How deteriorated were the bodies when you got them?” Mac asked at last.
“Until this one? Very. So, we are hopeful we’ll learn more from this one,” he said. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath. I think the results are going to be inconclusive.”
Mac thanked him. Called Sarah, the park ranger from last Sunday who’d reminded him of a middle school teacher. She remembered him.
“Are you getting complaints from hikers about gun noise in the park?” he asked.
“All the time. Didn’t Peabody tell you? Comes from that wilderness survival guy Ken Bryson, I’m convinced. But Peabody isn’t so sure, and he’s been reluctant to pursue it for some reason,” the woman said, her frustration obvious. “Probably the number one complaint we get — outranks no toilet paper in the latrines, I think.”
Mac laughed and thanked her. So why hadn’t Peabody mentioned it? Didn’t sound like Sarah — a woman he instinctively trusted as a source —respected her boss much, either, it was in her when she called him by his last name like that. He made note of that. Angie had been skeptical too.
Now on the treadmill he considered that. What had Angie seen that he hadn’t?
He’d also talked to some of Norton’s deputies. None of them were willing to say a word on the record except that he was an excellent officer of the law, and that his constitutional sheriff beliefs weren’t that far off base. “That’s why he’s an elected official,” one of them pointed out. “So that he doesn’t answer to anyone but the voters.”
Off the record was another story. One deputy, a woman, admitted she was job hunting. “Most of the deputies are,” she said. “Especially women. Skagit County is a great place to live if you like the outdoors. But I can’t work for that asshole much longer. He puts our lives at risk. It’s as if we have a bullseye on our backs for every gun fanatic in the county, and there are a lot of them here.”
“I was there at the Jorgensen incident,” Mac said.
“Yup. Man shoots at deputies, and nothing happens? Shit like that gets around. It’s as if he’s declared open season on his own men. And us women? I’m leaving in two weeks. Haven’t given my notice yet, so don’t go mentioning it, you hear? Trying to decide if I want to file a discrimination complaint on my way out the door.”
She’d been there six months. His abusive language, his rages, and his refusal to treat women deputies as real deputies had worn her down. “I don’t want to die like the others,” she said.
What? Mac thought. “Others?” he asked neutrally.
“You didn’t know? Two deputies have died since Norton’s taken office. Both times, it was a failure of backup. They called for backup, and no one came. Both were shot. No suspects. But then there was only a superficial investigation, I hear.”
“Where were they shot?” he asked.
“You mean geographically? One way out — outside Concrete. The other was near Lyman, I think. So even if someone had responded to their calls for help, they’d be hard pressed to get there in a timely fashion. But no one even tried.”
“Why not?” Mac asked.
“Good question. I don’t have an answer for you. Both happened before I got here. Dispatch recorded a call, issued an all-points bulletin. And then?” Mac could almost hear her shrug.
“Be safe, then,” Mac told her.
“Yeah, I won’t be taking chances,” she agreed.
The treadmill’s timer went off, pulling Mac out of his thoughts. He hopped off, wiped it down. The good thing about thinking on a treadmill is at least you got something out of it — the exercise if nothing else. Because things were no clearer in his head. He still didn’t know what to think about Skagit County and its sheriff — except that there was something seriously wrong up there.
Shorty was eating stir-fry when Mac got out to his apartment in Bellevue. He gestured to the wok, and Mac helped himself. Shorty was a good cook; he’d learned from both his Filipino father and Mexican mother. This meal involved wide rice noodles, chicken, garlic and he didn’t know what else. It was really good, and Mac was hungry.
“So, I did the content analyses that we talked about,” Shorty said as Mac continued to eat. “I think the sheriff is MLK4whites. Someone may have helped him set it up — like I’ve done with you — if his wife is right about him not having the tech smarts to do it. I found a letter he wrote to his constituents, and I’d say there’s at 70 percent chance he’s behind that account.”
Mac nodded. “That’s consistent with what I’m learning,” Mac said. He told Shorty about Norton’s previous life as a Skinhead.
“Fuck,” Shorty said. “I came across an article last night that said in the late 80s-early 90s Skinhead leaders decided that they needed to grow out their hair, cover their tats and exchange their clothes for the military and the police. That white supremacy required it of them.”
“And you think that’s what they’ve done? Gone undercover so to speak?” Mac asked.
“Don’t you?”
Mac took a deep breath and blew it out. “You’re talking intentional enlistments, not just cops who lean toward white supremacy.”
Shorty shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “But you said Rodriguez was afraid of his own co-workers. Maybe he has reason to be.”
“He has reason,” Mac said grimly. He told him about the FBI report Janet had sent to him. “In 2008,” he added. “They’ve known for six years, that there were white supremacists — organized, militant supremacists — in our police force and in our military. And they’ve suppressed those reports. Marking them confidential, or even rejecting them. Because no one wants to deal with it.”
“Well you’ve opened the can of worms now, Mac,” Shorty said.
“Any progress on the Sensei?”
Shorty shook his head. “He’s not Anderson, Malloy or Norton,” he said definitely. “Still looking at the other names, but they don’t know you, do they? I reread that email he sent you last night. He knows you. Someone you’re not looking at. Maybe someone in the SPD? Or Mac? And this is what’s got me worried tonight — maybe someone at the newspaper? But it’s someone you know.”
Mac thought about Steve Whitaker and his all-white-male team.
“It may be someone I know, but it isn’t someone I trust,” he said slowly. “Because on my list of people I trust? They’re mostly women, or they’re people of color. Weird, right? But I can’t think of a white man I trust. I mean the Examiner publisher, executive editor and managing editor seem like good men, but they were willing to sell me out during the Howard Parker story. That’s a bit harsh. But they didn’t back me. Janet did.”
“Women can be white supremacists,” Shorty pointed out. “But I’m pretty sure the Sensei is male. So, you’re right, probably not a colleague you rely on. But you need to be careful, because you could get blindsided on this. He knows you.”
“Could he know me because he’s read my work? Knows about me, not necessarily met me?” Mac asked, thinking about it. A lot of readers started thinking they knew him because they read his stuff. They wrote him fan letters. He’d never been sure whether to feel flattered or stalked.
Shorty hesitated. “Maybe,” he conceded. “But I think he’s met you.”
“OK,” Mac said. “I won’t ignore someone as irrelevant or dismiss someone as not being a threat.”
When Mac went home, there was an email waiting from the Sensei. Two of them, actually. One was clearly an email that went out to the general list. It was talking about self-discipline, and that a man couldn’t expect others to respect him and accept his authority if he didn’t respect himself. Mac snorted. He was pretty sure he’d heard that as a sermon in church with Kate. Didn’t sit any better minus the God part. Wasn’t that he disagreed, particularly, about self-respect and self-discipline, he thought. But he didn’t want an authoritarian relationship with his hypothetical wife.
So what kind of relationship did he want? He thought that might be something worth thinking about. Kate was looking for this kind of relationship. She liked Mac’s authority. She wanted a man who would be the head of the house. So, if he didn’t want that, and he knew he didn’t, then what the hell was he doing?
Not the first time that question had been posed, he thought with a snort. He needed to call her. And he needed to end things, so both of them could move on. He felt a pang of remorse, of giving up something he wanted. But his aunt was right. There were other kinds of families that didn’t require him to become something he didn’t want to be.
He opened the other email.
“One of the members of this more exclusive group posed an interesting question: What do I foresee that might trigger the collapse? What should people be looking out for?
So, let me try to answer that.
The collapse will come when the backbone of America, the white middle class, realizes that they are paying for a government that no longer meets their needs. That they are losing control of their own country. That the government can no longer be trusted. We are near that point now.
Then a crisis will hit, as crises do. But the government will use it to try to take control and shut down individual rights. The crisis might be a natural disaster, a civil disturbance, or a foreign attack. Probably more than one of those at the same time. But the government, now controlled by those who believe in multiculturalism and pluralism rather than the republic as established by the Constitution, will use that crisis to justify suspension of our liberties starting with the right to own guns. That’s why the development of an arsenal is such a crucial investment for those of us who must stand up to such a government intrusion and be able to fight back.
Warning signs?
The election of a black president was such a sign. Not just a black man, but one whose American citizenship has been legitimately questioned. One who has never served in the military.
Other signs? The continuing erosion of our Second Amendment rights. We must resist that at every turn. If your state or local government tries to pass legislation that limits gun ownership, you must use every means to protest. And the best protest is to add to your arsenal.
I cannot predict the exact crisis. That’s what will make it a crisis. And it may not even be obvious at first. That’s why we must be vigilant. We must be ready.
Sensei.
Mac frowned. He’d read that rhetoric in some of the background articles he’d been reading. That was basic white militia messaging. Well of course it was: That was what Sensei was building — his own, much larger, white militia.
But some of his troops were weak. He decided to ask Sensei about that. He fired off an email, pointing out that two of his troops had broken under stress in the last week. One had killed his children, the other had intended to kill his wife and daughter. And they weren’t the first ones either. Wasn’t that a problem for his goal of developing a trained, vigilant militia?
He did the Facebook routine begrudgingly. He still didn’t enjoy it. He felt like he was giving away information that could be used against him. But he commented on a few posts of others. Befriended those who had befriended him. He was approaching 500 friends. Was that normal? He looked at mlk4whites account. He had over 3k followers. Sensei had 40k. Holy shit, he thought. He checked Kate’s account. She had 284 friends. So that was a normal, private citizen, he thought, who had a pretty large circle of friends in the real world. In comparison, he probably had fewer that 40 people he’d even call acquaintances, much less friends, in the real world, and here he was with 500 FB friends, and it was growing rapidly.
But the troubling thing was mlk4whites and sensei’s accounts and their numbers. That was a hell of a large number of white supremacists. Of militia wannabes, weekend warriors. Really troubling. Mac frowned.
He closed out of Facebook, checked his email one last time.
There was a response from Sensei.
“You misunderstand my purpose,” it read. “I’m not trying to raise a large militia. I’m trying to improve white men. White men have gotten lazy and complacent. They shirk their leadership roles at home, at work, and in the community. They are weak; you are right. And I’m washing them out. Think of this as boot camp, Mac. I have no regrets if a man breaks under the limited pressure he finds himself under. I’m not even sorry that he eliminates his own flawed offspring. We must become stronger as a people if we are to resume our rightful role as leaders in the modern world.
The black man has been through the fire. He has been forged stronger and more powerful. Look at who are our cultural leaders today. In sports? In entertainment? Even in our government. Or take the Hispanics? Forged through back-breaking work. Committed to hard work ethic, to strong family units. Whites are losing, Mac, because we’re sloppy, resentful and weak. We have it too easy. That must change.
The winnowing has begun.
Sensei
Well, now, Mac thought soberly. That was interesting. He printed it out, sent a copy to Shorty and to Janet. And then he shut down the computer again. Completely.
His phone rang. It was Shorty. He picked up.
“What the fuck?” he said.
“Right?” Mac said. “Motherfucker is crazy.”
“Like a fox, though,” Shorty said.
“What do you think these wannabe militia types would think if they knew how Sensei really felt?” Mac asked.
“Probably, damn right, we need to winnow them out,” Shorty said. “That’s how people like this always think. They think they’re going to come out on top. Face it, how many of these desk jockeys, as you call them, would hold onto those arsenals for longer than 48 hours if we did have a civic breakdown? Someone would take it away from them. Someone like you.”
Mac laughed. He’d had the same thought. “Might even be me,” he agreed.
“Don’t forget who your friends are, then,” Shorty said, laughing.
“A technical question?” Mac asked. “Can he tell that I’ve forwarded his emails to you or Janet? A trace of some kind?”
Shorty thought about it. “Not without some work,” he said. “I haven’t seen any sign of it. He can tell if you’ve opened it. That’s about it.”
“OK,” Mac said, feeling better. He should have asked earlier. “He responded right away,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, he did. He’s local to this time zone. And he’s fixed on you, Mac,” Shorty said. Mac could hear the concern in his voice.
“I’m careful,” Mac promised, before he hung up. And he was, because a charismatic leader who had 40K followers, all building their little arsenals? Scary as fuck. Mac could envision taking one man’s arsenal from him.
But 40,000 arsenals?
He went to bed, but he couldn’t go to sleep as he kept thinking about 40,000 gun-toting nuts out there who were being told the white man should rise again and reclaim the country.