“You know about the rebels down at Camp Dawson?” I asked as I rubbed my sore neck. I realized I was doing it and stopped.
“The general in charge — at least he said he was a general — was in here and asked us not to mention all the people there over the air. And we haven’t. Haven’t said a peep about Camp Dawson. I gave our staff strict instructions.”
“This gentleman is Travis Clay. Travis, take Mr. Shinaberry over to Dawson and let him talk to Jake Grafton. Use Mr. Shinaberry’s truck. It’s out back.”
“Now, see here—” Shinaberry protested.
Travis put his hand on the guy’s shoulder and smiled. “Don’t be difficult,” he said. “You can drive.”
After they left, I suggested to Sue that it was time for her to go home. “We’ll lock up when we leave, after Mr. Shinaberry gets back.”
She was obviously relieved. She grabbed her purse without saying good-bye, trotted down the hallway, and closed the alley door behind her.
“It’s all yours,” I said to Sarah. “Send Jan out and get that guy in the ponytail to show you how the equipment works.”
Sarah took her computer and went into the studio. After ten minutes the announcer lady came out, frowned at me, and left via the alley door too. Ponytail was busy with a thumb drive Sarah had given him. Then Sarah got on the mike.
“We are going to air segments of a recording that was made at the White House over the previous six months. Not all of it, but segments. The voices you will hear are those of President Soetoro, his staff, and other public officials. There are about sixty hours of recorded material, a small fraction of the whole, and this station will be on the air day and night until the entire sixty hours has played, then we will run it again. Josh, let it rip.”
And he did.
Barry Soetoro’s voice came over the loudspeaker. Three minutes later the telephone rang. I answered it with the station’s call letters.
A man’s voice: “Where in the hell did you guys get that tape?”
“How does it sound?” I asked.
“Holy shit! President Soetoro said that?”
“He did.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“He didn’t have anything to do with it,” I told him and put the phone back in its cradle. It rang again. I figured that we were going to get a lot of calls, so I unplugged the phone. I looked into the studio and saw that Sarah was doing the same thing to the phone in there. I could hear the phone ringing in the manager’s office, so I walked down and unplugged that one too.
Tobe Baha, the Secret Service sniper, was having dinner that evening at his hotel on Congress Avenue in Austin. It was a nice hotel, perfect for expense-account executives and rich oilmen bringing their wives or girlfriends to see the bright lights of the big city. Tobe thought his odd hours would bring less notice here and he would have to answer fewer well-meaning questions than he would have at some cheap motel on the interstate where guests rarely stayed more than a night or two.
So he was studying the menu and contemplating ordering a steak when three men entered the dining room, looked around, and seeing him, walked purposefully toward his table. They were in civilian clothes wearing sports coats, and from the slight bulges he could see that they were packing pistols in their armpits. After years in the Secret Service, he could spot an armed man at fifty yards.
The man in front seated himself on Tobe’s left and put an iPad on the table. The other two took the remaining chairs.
“Good evening, Mr. Baha,” the man on his left said. He was the older of the three, in his mid-fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair getting thin on top. “I’m Colonel Frank Tenney. I’m the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety. These gentlemen are colleagues of mine.”
Tobe tried to hide his surprise, and did fairly well, he thought. He was registered at this hotel under a false name, so the use of his real name put him on notice.
“Are you carrying this evening?” Tenney asked, just making conversation.
Tobe tried to look surprised. “Of course not.”
Tenney just nodded. The waitress came over, delivered Tobe’s Scotch on the rocks, passed out menus to the new arrivals, and inquired about drinks. The lawmen all ordered iced tea.
“I have some video on my iPad I’d like to show you,” Tenney said, then picked up the tablet and began playing with it. In a few seconds, he placed it so Tobe could see it.
The screen began showing aerial shots. Tobe Baha instantly knew what he was looking at: drone surveillance video. And there he was, in the van, parking it, getting out, looking around, strolling the street. Then there were shots of Tobe up on roofs, using the laser rangefinder, back on the street, driving through the city, going into stores and public places…
After three or so minutes, Tenney picked up the iPad and shut it off. He put it on his left.
Tenney smiled at Baha. The waitress came back with the drinks. Tenney told her that they would not be staying for dinner. She looked at Tobe, who told her, “Later.”
When she had moved off, Tenney said, “We were surprised when you showed up in Austin, since Texas is no longer a part of the United States and Barry Soetoro isn’t planning a visit, at least to the best of my knowledge.”
Tobe picked up the Scotch and sipped it. His hand was steady, and he hoped that the colonel noticed that. If he did, he gave no sign.
“We thought that perhaps you were here to use your sniper skills on someone in Austin. Of course, we haven’t yet seen you with your rifle. No doubt it is somewhere in Austin, and if necessary we could arrest you and search and find it. It will probably have your fingerprints on it and so forth. But President Hays thought that an arrest and trial would not be good for future relations between Texas and the United States.”
Colonel Tenney leaned toward Tobe Baha. He was speaking softly, and his eyes were impossible to avoid. “I also thought about disappearing you. That would solve any diplomatic problems, and the justice system wouldn’t have the expense of fooling with you. Do you understand?”
Those eyes boring into his made evasion impossible. “Yes,” Tobe said.
“That’s good. We’re tying up a lot of people flying these drones and keeping tabs on you, and enough is enough. So I stopped by this evening to let you know. If a sniper fires a shot anywhere in Austin and you’re still around, we’ll come for you. You will be killed resisting arrest and be buried somewhere in west Texas in an unmarked grave. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes.”
“Barry Soetoro or your Secret Service colleagues may decide that you have lived long enough, so you may want to rethink your return to the States. Be that as it may, you may reside in Texas as long as you never again show your face in Austin. If someone fires a rifle in Austin and you are around after this evening, you are a walking dead man.”
Tenney stood and picked up his iPad. “Just a friendly warning. You can pay for our tea.”
He and his colleagues walked out of the restaurant.
Tobe Baha drained his Scotch. He glanced at the menu, decided he wasn’t hungry, and ordered another drink.
About ten after six, Travis Clay came through the alley door of the radio station with four buffed-up guys. “Grafton sent Mr. Shinaberry home. The sheriff and city police chief were there and we won’t have any trouble with them.”
“Patriots are they?”
“With twenty-five hundred armed people at Dawson, they saw the light, whether they are patriots or Soetoro loyalists.” He gestured to the other men. “Grafton thought we could use more help.”
“Get Willis in here.”
The ex-soldiers, for that is what they were, stood listening to the radio feed on the loudspeakers, shaking their heads. One of them muttered, “That son of a bitch.”