“Beyond that, issuance of drivers’ licenses, license plates, and vehicle registration will cease. They were once intended to improve the safety of the road—or prove you’d paid a vehicle tax—but like Social Security numbers, they’ve been abused. They’ve become nothing more than police state tracking devices, and are no longer worth whatever good they were supposed to accomplish.

  “For individual members of the police and military, I have a personal message: the time for denial is over. If any of these proposed measures angers you, remember who did it to you. Remember that you let them do it. Until you prove the contrary to people you swore to protect and serve, you’re the same as those among you who:

  “Firebombed and burned a neighborhood out of existence when residents were accused of nothing more than disturbing the peace;

  “Assassinated a harmless old man to steal his valuable estate;

  “Shot a little boy and his dog to death, then blew his mother’s head off with a high-powered rifle as she held her baby in her arms;

  “Confined, terrorized, gassed, and machinegunned 80 innocent men, women—two dozen little children—in a church that was their home;

  “Shot a young goat-herder on the Mexican border because he was carrying an ancient .22 rifle to defend his flock from predators;

  “Tortured and tried to dispose of political prisoners by denying them prescribed medication and proper medical assistance;

  “Threatened, and confiscated evidence from, investigators who questioned a cover-up of an airline crash that killed hundreds;

  “Stomped kittens to death in an attempt to intimidate innocent victims of a narcotics raid carried out at the wrong address;

  “And committed thousands of other acts that have transformed a once-free country into a horror-filled abyss. Think back to when you playing with your whistle, toy handcuffs, and plastic revolver. Did you want to be a cop more than anything so your fellow human beings would be afraid of you, or did you have something nobler in mind?

  “It’s time to stand down. Just as the Cold War is over and it’s time for the Pentagon to stand down, the War on Drugs—intended to destroy the Constitution you all swore to uphold and defend—is over, too. Don’t allow socialists to use your body and mind to force illegal, immoral, alien ideas on an unwilling populace. From now on, you are no longer ‘law enforcement officers’, you are keepers of the peace, stewards of the American way of life. Your goal must be to enforce the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights. Indeed, it’s the justification for your existence and that of the government.

  “Don’t let your overpaid ‘superiors’ tell you what the Bill of Rights means. Remember your oath. Don’t let judges and lawyers—who stand to benefit from the destruction of the Bill of Rights—tell you what it means. Remember your oath and do what most public officials haven’t done for half a century: think for yourself.

  “Begin by asking yourself a question: if you were one of America’s Founders and you’d just fought a successful revolution against the most powerful, ruthless, and heavy-handed government on Earth, and the last thing in the world you wanted for yourself or your children or your grandchildren was to find yourself beneath the brutal heel of its jackboot again, what would you want the Bill of Rights to mean?

  “If that powerful, ruthless, heavy-handed government’s first act had been to try to take your guns, would you have written a Second Amendment to guarantee its ‘right’ to own and carry weapons? Or would you have forbid it from ever having anything to say about your guns?

  “The War on Drugs is over. Think back: every dime ever spent on it has made the problem worse. Millions of decent folks believe that, from the outset, it was never meant as anything but a war against the people of America. It’s time to end that war, to abolish the FBI, DEA, ATF, and every other federal agency not mentioned in the Constitution, and for that reason alone, is illegal.

  “As of this moment, hiring for these agencies is shut off. Those who survive scrutiny of their past activities will be made US marshals and assigned to Bill of Rights enforcement. As such, they will be turned loose on politicians, bureaucrats, and judges, instead of—“

  Somebody screamed, “You’re not gonna take my pension!”

  A shot rang out—Alex clutched at his chest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: LINDSAY ROGERS

  Those who lead through authority have rivals on whom they must expend as much energy and attention as they do on their enemies. Those who lead by example have enemies, but no rivals.—Alexander Hope, Looking Forward

  It was more pleasant inside the little country post office than out, where the

  summer rain fell in fat, cold, wind-driven drops. Mrs. Revets, on crutches

  the past six weeks, was recovering from a long-overdue operation on her knees, and wasn’t looking forward to venturing out into the weather, even if it was just to get to her car.

  Opening her glass-fronted rental box with a key, she pulled out a bundle of papers—she hadn’t collected her mail in a couple of weeks—and was annoyed when a small yellow booklet in a clear plastic envelope fell onto the muddy floor. As she stooped to pick it up, an awkward and painful task with her crutches, on the booklet’s cover she read the words, “united nations is killing your freedoms!”

  “Let me do that for you, Mrs. Revets.”

  As he handed her the booklet, she looked into the kindly face of the local postmaster, Rex Frederick, a man she’d known for 50 years. They’d gone to high school together in this little town; she’d taught each of his three children in turn at the local public school; his grandson had been in the last class she’d taught before retiring.

  “’Mrs. Revets?’” she repeated. “Since when did you stop calling me by my Christian name, Rex Federick? As if we hadn’t grown up together, as if we hadn’t made that unchaperoned trip to Springfield with Warren and Henrietta and the McNulty twins, back in the summer of ‘62!”

  The postmaster blushed. He still wondered sometimes how they’d gotten away with that. She’d married Warren four years later—they’d all graduated 1964—and he’d married Henrietta when he came back from the Navy. The McNulty twins had moved to California and nobody here had seen or heard from them again.

  “You’ve got me there, Viola. Anything else I can do for you this morning? How about a cup of coffee—it’s terrible tasting but hot.”

  “No, thank you, Rex. But you could tell me what this thing is.” She held out the yellow booklet in its transparent wrapper.”

  “That,” he replied. “You’ll find one in every box this morning, and in every residential mailbox, too. It was all over the news. They were sent out by a private foundation backed by the Hope Corporation, which means they’re actually from President Hope. Other billionaires—Bill Gates, Warren Buffet—seem to spend their money trying to cram socialism down everybody’s throats. Too bad they can’t be more like Alexander Hope.”

  “That man!” Dead or not, Viola had voted for the former first lady. “Rex, I was a teacher for 30 years. I collected money for UNICEF at Hallowe’en, and celebrated Human Rights Day. This ... this ... “ She held the booklet out at arm’s length, at a loss for words.

  “Yes, Viola, what about it?” Truth was, he was enjoying this.

  She was exasperated. “It’s right-wing propaganda!”

  The postmaster sighed. Half a century ago, he’d briefly considered going steady with Viola instead of Henrietta. She was prettier and had a certain style like nobody else in their tiny high school. Not for the first time, he was glad he hadn’t. Viola couldn’t see a difference between her feelings and her thoughts, between the way she wanted things to be and the way they actually were. She was kindly, generous with everyone, but Warren had died a decade ago, old before his time.

  “Viola, you haven’t read it yet. Did you ever compare the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights with our own Bill of Rights?”

  “Why, no, Rex. I know the Bill of Rights pretty well, of course. And I read through the Declaration once or twice, a long time ago. I guess I just assumed they were the same thing, more or less.”

  “Mostly less, Viola. Under the Bill of Rights, government exists only with the permission of the people, whom it was created to serve. Under the Declaration, there are no rights, in fact, only privileges to be granted (or withheld) by governments that people are obligated to obey without question or hesitation.”

  Handing the rest of her mail to Rex, she tore open the plastic bag and extracted the small booklet. “Why, it’s a comic book! Apparently part of a series produced by a group called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership—they must be a minority within a minority! “

  The full title was Gran’pa Jack Exposes How the United Nations is Killing your Freedoms!. Inside was the story, in comicbook form, of a patriot striving to undo the “brainwashing” the public schools had imposed on his grandchildren.

  “What’s wrong with a comic book?” Rex asked. “I understand that next week, they’re sending one out about how to get a fair trial in America—it’s about that jury nullification the President is always mentioning at the end of his speeches.”

  “Nothing at all. I always thought it was a terrible shame Classic Illustrated went out of business before I got started. It would have made teaching Silas Marner easier.” She leafed through the little book. “It says here the Declaration fails to protect us from state established religion, or from government quartering troops in our homes. Why would they leave out a thing like that, Rex?”

  He shrugged. “I imagine for the same reason it forgets to mention search warrants, grand juries, and rules against double jeopardy, excessive bail, or seizure of property without compensation. For the same reason it fails to guarantee a speedy trial, the right to an attorney, a jury trial in the same venue where the crime occurred, the right to subpoena witnesseses, and to confront your accuser.”

  They walked slowly to the counter, where he lifted a section and went to the coffee pot. Viola indicated that she’d changed her mind. He brought a stool out for her, poured two cups and offered her sugar and half-and-half he kept in a tiny refrigerator.

  “Remember,” he began again, “that this Declaration was written specifically to please UN member states, the very sort of monsters who rounded up and murdered millions of Jews in Germany, farmers in Russia, property owners and people who were literate in China and Cambodia, and so on. The whole idea is to subordinate individual rights to the power of the state, and impose socialism on everybody by inventing ‘rights’—to the the wealth, time, and energy of others—that don’t actually exist.”

  She made a clucking sound. “Rex, you sound just like our old Civics teacher, Mr. Sullivan.”

  “He was always my favorite. He would have pointed out that the Declaration fails to protect citizen militias and the individual right to own and carry weapons. In fact it’s a major objective of the UN to seize and destroy every privately-owned weapon in the world.”

  “That might not be such a a bad thing. There are too many guns out there in the wrong hands, and children killing children with them.”

  “That’s what the Jews said, Viola, just before they were rounded up and sent off in cattle cars to camps where they were murdered!”

  Viola laughed. “I was just pushing your buttons. I know how you feel about gun ownership, the whole town does. Besides,” she patted her oversized handbag. “I practice a little gun ownership, myself!”

  They laughed together and drank their coffee.

  ***

  John Pondoro and Agent Smith both plunged into the audience and a jungle of 375 tables and 3000 chairs. Cap was already out there somewhere. Men shouted hoarsely at no one in particular. Women made a lot of high-pitched, silly noises. Most of them were crouching on the floor, many with their guns drawn.

  Alex had his Witness out of the nylon shoulder holster before he thought about it. He preferred his plastic hip-holster, and hadn’t realized he’d acquired the reflex to snatch across his chest at a gun under his left armpit. As he crouched behind the lectern (they’d brought it with them, it was lined with half an inch of steel), there were flashes that didn’t quite startle him enough to shoot at them. Tomorrow’s websites and papers, he knew, would show him armed, ready to fight. Some, even in his own party, would think that was a bad thing.

  John and Cap returned to the podium, accompanied by a tall, angular 60ish man, with a walrus moustache, receding hairline, and a face that had seen a lot of outdoors.

  “This is Deputy Sheriff Lindsay Rogers,” John told Alex.

  “Retired deputy sheriff,” the man corrected. “Larimer County, Colorado.” He thrust a weathered, long-fingered hand up, toward the President. Alex came out from behind the lectern, stepped down from the dais, shifted the Witness to his left and took the man’s hand.

  “Retired deputy sheriff,” John conceded. “He saved your life, Mr. President. That shot we heard was his and it almost got him killed by the Secret Service. Some guy was drawing a bead on you.”

  Cap added, “Faith-Anne, once she got her .38 back in her purse and her hands stopped shaking enough to consult her laptop, says he wasn’t a cop. Rogers blew his head off with a great big Para-Ordnance .45.”

  “The Secret Service took my gun,” Rogers complained. “How do I go about gettting it back?”

  Alex reversed his hold on the Witness and thrust the grip at the stranger. “I’ll get it back for you, Deputy. Until I do, take mine.”

  ***

  “Look at this! Just look at this!” The California Senator opened a huge manila envelope and spilled half a bushel of yellow pamphlets over the table they were sitting at in the bar they all occupied between sessions in the House and Senate.

  The Senator from New York jerked back as a dozen booklets spilled into his lap and onto the floor. “For heaven’s sake, Diane, you nearly spilled my drink! What are these things, anyway?”

  “Constitutionalist propaganda,” said the Colorado congresswoman, jowls bobbing as she talked, “sent to every household in America—a hundred million of them—printing and postage paid by our beloved President. And there wasn’t anything we could do to stop it.”

  The California Senator sat down at one end of the horseshoe-shaped booth. “We stopped these!” she boasted. “Part of a truckload that postal workers in the District refused to deliver. Imagine millions of black residents of Washington, D.C. being told they have a right to own guns, after all the work we’ve done, taking them away!”

  “Why do I have,” said the Democratic leader of the House. “no inclination to take off my Kevwar when I go out at night? And by the way, do thothe postaw workews know they’we going to jaiw?”

  “Shut up, Bee!” the California Senator demanded. “We’ve got to do something about this!”

  “Well somebody tried something this afternoon,” the New York Senator measured his words carefully. “But it doesn’t seem to have worked. We need to try something else, and I know just the thing ... “

  ***

  Agent Smith blocked the way, hands at chest level, palms out.

  “I can’t let you do that, Mr. President! My bosses will have my eyeballs poached on toast!” There was pleading in the man’s voice. Alex felt genuine sympathy for him. But like all professionals, sooner or later—doctors, architects, literary agents, lawyers—he’d forgotten, momentarily, who worked for whom.

  “Refer your bosses to me, Agent Smith,” Alex told him, feeling suddenly very silly. All he wanted was to cross a room—a downtown Washington, DC hotel ballroom—on his own feet. Having to beg somebody or make a fuss to get it done was ridiculous. “I mean to have a look at that body before the city, or whoever, carts it away. You can come with me if you want to. If not, stand aside. Please.”

  Agent Smith sighed, cast his gaze down at his highly-polished shoes, and shook his head. “Very well, sir. I’ll come with you.” He started whispering into his left jacket sleeve.

  “Good,” declared the President. “You watch my back and John can watch my front, since I was foolish enough to let somebody borrow my gun. Dana? Faith-Anne? Cap?” Dana put her hand over her stomach and rolled her eyes, but nodded. His daughter gave him a reluctant but willing look. Cap put a hand on her shoulder and together, they proceeded toward the center of the big room where the corpse, by now, was the center of attention for paramedics—who were just packing their equipment up, there having been no use for it—police photographers, and the medical examiner, working under the scrutiny of a dozen Secret Service people.

  The well-dressed body of the would-be assassin lay on its back, the legs and arms splayed on the carpet. Between the corpse’s feet lay an enormous stainless steel Colt Anaconda revolver with “.44 Magnum” stamped along its six inch barrel. The head was turned toward the right and was the center of a huge dark, glistening stain that was still spreading. Alex had seen dead bodies before—and smelled them, as well. This one had relaxed everything completely.

  There was a neat circular entrance wound as big as Alex’s thumb, roughly an inch higher than the midpoint between the right ear and eye. Although it was turned away, Alex could see matted hair on the left side, and white matter—brain tissue—leaking from an exit wound hidden in the matted hair. There would be suits, uniforms, and evening dresses at the dryceaner’s tonight. Or in the dumpster.

  He wondered what had become of the bullet.

  Alex turned to look at his companions. Dana was pale and shaky, but grinned at him gamely. She came to him and he put his arms around her. Faith-Anne shrugged. “It isn’t as bad as I thought. He’s dead and you’re alive, Daddy. That’s about as good as it gets.”

  “Have you ever got that right!” Dana said.

  “So who is he?” Alex asked nobody in particular. He thought the man looked vaguely familiar, but couldn’t be sure, given the condition of the corpse and the circumstances in general.