"The plot carried the story along rapidly, keeping my interest. I liked the multi-layered plot (internal); it kept me guessing, which a suspense novel should do. I was surprised to see the strong role of the female protagonists--from the title, I expected it to have a very strong male protagonist (don't take this remark as a negative, because it worked very well with a female lead.) Once the plot was uncovered and the rebels subdued, I figured the story was over. And when I came to the epilog, I was surprised...a nice concluding touch."--Lt. Cdr. Don Windle, U.S.N. (Ret.), author "Where Bees Swarm"

Terrified, Brandy ran along the Pacific seashore just after dawn on a summer day.

She was 14 years-old and alone, except for her tormentor.

She ran on long thin legs, wearing faded pink pajama shorts and her much-older brother's olive-drab T-shirt. Her thick dark hair, glowing with reddish-amber highlights, bobbed as she raced over the flat wet sand of Imperial Beach, just north of the Mexican border.

Her mouth was open, sucking desperate gulps of air, and her dark blue eyes fluttered as she heard every breath and curse of the man who pressed close behind her.

Offshore, a gray island loomed, swathed in sea fog--an aircraft carrier, and beyond that a line of smaller gray shapes. The sky was the lightest of powder blues, the sun a cold silver coin in the mist. The ship turned her bow into the wind, with a fighter plane roaring aloft every 40 seconds or so. The aircraft carrier churned up a distantly visible bow wake as she sought advantage in her practice for battle. Oblivious of Brandy's struggle on shore, the carrier battle group was assembling to race toward a new confrontation on the other side of the globe.

Brandy stumbled and fell with a shocked yelp.

Mr. O'Brady coughed a mixture of sputum and triumphant laughter. She glimpsed him barely 20 feet behind her: white haired, red faced, wearing only dingy gray boxer shorts and a stained green tank top that showed off the middle-aged flab on his arms and breasts. He smelled of whiskey and cigarettes--the horrid musky animal scent that had helped awaken her, gagging, in her bed in the mobile home barely four or five minutes ago.

She was deep asleep, dreaming in movie color of a great vegetable patch in which teddy bears marched around with hoes, perhaps because of the marijuana haze coming from the livingroom. She felt rough hands on her bare legs, pulling off her pajama bottom. He swayed drunkenly from side to side, each sway pulling the fragile, worn fabric further down her legs. The bottoms were easy anyway--the elastic had long given up, lost snap. She blinked numbly, wishing he'd stop and she could pull up the covers because her thighs had goosebumps as the cold morning air wafted over them from the open window. When she realized who he was and what he was doing, she screamed, for she'd heard rumors he killed people. "Jeremy!" she screamed over and over for her brother.

She screamed: "Stop that, Mr. O'Brady!" but the groundskeeper of the mobile home, who'd spent the night drinking and playing cards with her brother and his friends, was the only one who could hear. His eyes were maniacal buttons of sexual hunger, his grin idiotic and festooned with spittle--from early evening she'd seen him staring after her with a kind of mean speculation, but it had taken a night of hard drinking to remove the last thin veneer of false decency.

She palmed him in the face as hard as she could, as her brother had taught her. The bony pads near her wrist caught him full on the nose and he let go of her legs. She dug her fingernails, with dirt showing where the red polish had chipped off, into his eyes, and he bellowed, but luckily his eyelids had closed reflexively at the strike of her palm, or she'd be blinding him. Instead, she felt the soggy meat in his wrinkled eyelids turn bloody under her fingernails. He bellowed again and she slipped past him, running.

In the livingroom lay five bodies. Not dead, just drugged out. The place smelled of marijuana smoke and spilled beer. And food, lots of food, when the boys got together for cards. She was street-wise and saw the picture in a flash: Mr. O'Brady must have had money, and they'd cut him in, hoping to skin him. Instead, he drank them under the table, probably had all their money in his pocket, and for good measure thought he'd help himself to a piece of Brandy.

Mr. O'Brady staggered out of her bedroom calling her dirty names.

She kicked the door open in an explosive run, and jumped. With one bound she landed on the tiny landing, with a second bound hopped on one arm over the railing, sailed over the bushes, and hit the driveway of the battered 60-foot single-wide mobile home running. Mr. O'Brady chugged right behind her, chuckling and breathing raggedly. He knew he would catch her, and she read the triumph in the noises he made. His grunts telegraphed the violent, lurid, angry movie of what he planned to do once he caught her. Jeremy and his biker friends had mentioned him in conversation, with some bravura awe, not to show they were intimidated, but legend had it Mr. O'Brady had spent ten years in a Navy brig for beating a man to death. The bikers also spoke of O'Brady taking hookers up into the Jacumba mountains, and coming back alone.

As she ran, the thought of those dark, deep forests of pine growth--dark green, almost black, a color of terror--made the skin crawl up and down her back. Mr. O'Brady was so close she could not stop to gather breath to scream. It was early and nobody was out. She could stop to bang on doors, but that would let him catch up with her--and the first thing would be that dirty, cigarette-smelling hand, hard as steel, closing over her mouth, the other hand digging vicious knuckles into her unprotected ribs, and then would come the ride into the mountains. Brandy could rely on nobody now--just herself. They raced down beachside back alleys and then out onto the sand.

She picked herself up from the stumble on the beach and continued running. Not far ahead, as she ran north along the sand in Imperial Beach, was the pier. Surely there would be fishermen there. She thought she spotted the thin whisps of their poles, but she couldn't be sure. Mr. O'Brady was getting angrier now, and he kept closing. How did he summon this superhuman energy? Was it all the sugar in the booze? Was he on speed? She wished she had the fleshed-out body of an adult so she could run more effectively. She felt awkward in her growing frame--legs long but not long enough, skinny and not very strong, torso just budding, narrow-shouldered, not packing enough oxygen to make the whole apparatus run well.

She knew well enough what he was after. She'd been having sex with a succession of Jeremy's friends during the past year. Jeremy's attitude was: "Just be cool, girl. Go to school, keep the heat off me, I don't need that bullshit. And remember, I love you and I'll take care of you."

Yeah, right. Like now.

They had a pact of survival. Their dad was in Long Beach at the federal prison, serving 25 to life on a third conviction for embezzlement, forgery, and confidence crimes. Their mom had lasted a bit, but raising children alone on welfare had been too much for her, and she'd taken off with a flashy fellow from Vegas who always had rolls of C-notes in his pockets. Actually, besides that, mom hadn't been so bad. The flashy guy--Brandy had blocked out his name, hated him for taking her mother--had liked to pinch Brandy's butt and check her breasts with his thumb and index finger. Mom had seen that, and Brandy had seen the look of pain and realization in her mother's eyes, the way mom rolled her eyes up knowing that she must go away with this man so he would not molest her daughter. And mom had stolen two grand from her lover, by way of getting even, and given it to Jeremy, making him promise to take care of his little sister. That had been over a year ago. They hadn't heard from her since. Jeremy, by now 18, was out of school and running with the Imperial Beach Foo Klan Angels, a biker club that wholesaled street drugs and occasionally carried out a hit--all out of town, of course, quick in, quick out.

Maybe, she thought as the cool sand grabbed her ankles time and again, if she went full circle, back to the mobile home, maybe they'd be awake by now. They'd take Mr. O'Brady out of town, maybe to the Jacumbas, and they'd come back alone.

But there he was, panting along behind her.

The aircraft carrier wheeled in glory, her bow wake gleaming white as laughing teeth. The jets banked one by one and howled in low over the beach across the inlet at Coronado. Sun gleaming on their wings, they would land at North Island Naval Air Station for a final checkout before the fleet sailed to the Iranian Gulf.

Brandy barely noticed. She only wished the sailors could come to help her. Though Jeremy and his friends spoke badly of it, the military was supposed to be a good thing. Brandy carried secrets in her heart--of long ago, when mom and dad had been together. They'd had fun times, always easy, with money flowing past, and she'd get whatever toys she wanted. So long ago. Dad sitting her on his lap, mom laughing as she spoon fed her little girl, Jeremy yelling as he ran outside with his new toy rifle. All gone. Just in the corner of her room, where Jeremy would not notice, was a picture of a stern ageless man in Army officer's uniform. He had kindly eyes--she'd never met him, because he'd been killed in Vietnam many, many years ago--Dad's dad. Somewhere out in the world, Brandy vaguely knew, was a strict old lady with bluish-white hair who always wanted to make Jeremy and Brandy come live with her. While the old lady offered good things to eat, the rules were strict like in a prison, and the weather back in Iowa sucked big frapping weenie balls. Jeremy and Brandy lived in fear that the old woman would find out mom had split, and come to take Brandy away. For that reason, and because she liked the orderly, tidy world in school, she marched off to the school bus every schoolday morning. She tried hard to keep her mouth in check, and she'd had some detentions, but the teachers mostly liked her and felt sorry for her, and kept her out of the principal's office. She did her homework, even sometimes if her brother and his boys got her high by blowing jay into her bedroom through a cracked door. "Stop that!" she'd say, and get up to kick the door shut. She'd girlfriended them one by one, liking the affection she got. Jeremy was the leader, and kept a sharp eye out for her. "What are you doing this for?" he once asked as she sauntered by after making love with Rafer; she had a cigarette dangling from her mouth, and wore only a large bath towel. "What's wrong with you, girl?"

"Nothing wrong with me," she said tossing her chin back and using both hands to fly her hair back in a bundle so she could turban it with a second towel lying on one shoulder. "That's what it's all about, right? You get love where you can find it and don't worry about tomorrow, like in those old hippie songs."

He'd shut up after that, as long as she went to school and kept him and herself out of trouble. He said once: "I don't give a damn if you act 14, or 34, as long as you keep us out of trouble. And go to school. You're the only one with brains around here."

Someone got her drunk once, and there was this attractive picture on the bottle. Still she was drunk, her boyfriend at the time paid a guy down the row to tattoo a peach on her belly, with 'Peach' written above it, and 'Brandy' underneath, just above the v between her belly and right leg. She'd had mixed feelings about it. They'd nicknamed her Brandy. She found she enjoyed having a man at her side--a young man, a boy, not an old animal like Mr. O'Brady. She enjoyed hanging out, feeling a boy's hand on her waist or hip or butt. She liked the anger, the possessive rage, the jealousy she made them feel. She knew how to control a situation so she brought her boy to the edge of a fight with another boy, and then ease off. Jeremy's boys had a reputation, and the other guy was usually happy to back out of it. Once, though, Eric had bloodied a good-looking young boy's face, and she'd reconsidered the sport. The boy had looked so neat and trim, like some of the goody-goodies at school that she didn't belong with. She hated them at first, then realized that she wanted to be like them. Now she kind of resented them, not hated them, but was angry because she could never fit in there. Jeremy's motto was "live and die young, it's the only damn way." She had a sort of sick feeling deep inside that she'd die violently, and maybe now with Mr. O'Brady the moment had come. She remembered church and offered an Act of Contrition for all her many sins, all the fights, the stoned nights, the sex she knew she should not have had. She swore she'd give it all up if God let her survive. Not the forest, she pleaded, not that! She remembered the pleasure of belonging, of intimacy with those big boys, their smooth hard skin rippling with muscle like steel inside rubber, their breath delicious on her lips, their arousal full inside of her. She thought it odd that now she wished she hadn't. She was done with them, she thought; her last gig had been a few months with Eric, but he was 20 and married, and the wife had showed up banging on the mobile home door with a baseball bat at 3 in the morning. Jeremy had gone out with a .38 and told her to shut up before the cops came. Eric had wrestled his wife to the car to take her home, and the cops came anyway, but it was like that most nights at the Happy Dell Mobile Home Ranch.

This whole fractured movie, this trembling mosaic of her life, flashed through her mind in millisecond bursts inbetween squeaks of terror and frantic looking toward the pier.

Odd, now, that she didn't hear Mr. O'Brady anymore.

Glancing behind her, she saw that he had fallen. He lay curled on one side, one arm over his head. A hand dangled over his forehead, twitching. Was he having a heart attack?she hoped. Would he croak and leave her alone? She made a wide turn and jogged back toward the mobile home. She ran on the side where she could see his face. His eyes glittered as if he were crying. His face was blue, and his mouth was open, round, like the end of a fat hose, as he vomited. Out came little bits of grits or something ugly, like he was counting them out, whup!, one two three, urp, there went another one. Gross!

"Asshole!" she yelled, realizing in a wave of relief that she'd won. "You Asshole! Fuck you! Wait until my brother finds out about this, you old smelly idiot! You better move out of this state, or your ass is gonna go one way and your nuts the other!" She picked up a wad of wet sand, spit in it, balled it up, and dumped it on his head as she jogged past. He cried out feebly but didn't move.

"Die of a heart attack, you stupid asshole! Go ahead, make my day, you pie-ass son of a bitch!"

She sprinted toward the water, whooping, skipping and jumping up and down in great strides. Seeing the magnificent aircraft carrier heeling smartly, she waved her fists in the air and whooped repeatedly. Its white bow wake grinned at her. She did a cartwheel and ran home.

The boys glowered over breakfast. "Where you been?" Jeremy asked. "Been out all night?"

"What are we, married?" She took the o.j. from the fridge. "Where friggin' are you when I need you?" She let the door swing shut as she drank from the carton. "Freakin' toked out on the floor, and me hollering for you." Juice dribbled down her front and she wiped it with her wrist as she tore a plate from the cupboard. "O'Brady tried to rape me. He chased me down the beach." She scraped a wad of eggs and bacon onto the plate. She slammed the drawer open and shut, and a fork appeared in her hand as if by magic. "I was asleep, and he was pulling my pants off."

Jeremy listened with darkening face, exchanging glances with the other men.

"And I'm sure," she rubbed it in, "I'm sure you guys don't have a dollar left between you. He cleaned you out, ain't that right?"

"Where is he now?"

"I think he's dead on the beach. If you want your money back, better go now before he starts to stink. I mean, he already reeks, but that ain't quite the stench of death yet, you know?" She gulped o.j. and wolfed down her eggs. She enjoyed being thoroughly in charge at the moment. "What the hey? No money, no girls, no dope--you guys are in sad shape."

"Shut up, Brandy," Jeremy said. Nobody else dared say it, with Jeremy there.

As Brandy walked out the door a while later, showered and dressed and carrying her schoolbooks, the boys were combing down the beach in a row, hands in pockets, their gait ominous. Brandy had to run to catch the school bus as it started to snort and roar away from the curb. Mr. O'Brady never did show up at the mobile home park again, and she never wanted to ask what happened to him. Sometimes at night she woke up shivering, thinking he was coming to pull her pants off again, and she'd wander out of her bedroom holding her teddy bear, half asleep, to snuggle with whoever was sleeping on the couch. The picture of the man in Army uniform never changed--always self-righteous, shit-don't-happen-to-me, except shit happened when he died in the war--and she revered him the way other people kept religious icons on their dressers. One day, Grandpa would come back and make everything be normal the way it was supposed to be.

Nothing was as it was supposed to be. They had an old tv, whose control wand was stuck on CNN. Every time she turned it on to watch MTV or Discovery or something cool, she had to distastefully watch the ugly world of adults playing itself out. If that was Congress, she thought, those were a bunch of fools. Grownups in business suits, attacking and accusing each other, lawyers sharpening points of law to impale each other--especially that one man with the smug face and bullying attitude, the one with those mean beady little eyes whose fat head always seemed to be in the middle of everything. What would Grandpa have said if he knew he'd died for these morons? It was really hard to have any respect at all. It was hard to feel, as a teenager, that all of life was not a mean, dirty cesspool created by the adult population who seemed to have no brains.

Some detectives came around after Mr. O'Brady disappeared, and they asked Jeremy some questions, but Jeremy was smooth, real real smooth, and they left, giving him their cards and asking Jeremy to call them if he learned any more about Mr. O'Brady's whereabouts. Jeremy was real slick--he didn't throw the cards away, but kept them taped to the cracked door window, in case they ever came back; then he could say he'd kept them in mind. But Brandy had a feeling he was laughing inwardly, and the cards were like trophies. And Mr. O'Brady was a reeking, grinning skeleton under the pine trees in the mountains.

Brandy began throwing up every morning.

On a Saturday afternoon, she sat with her best friend Rosie on the sea wall near the Hotel Del Coronado. They were smoking cigarettes, high up on the one-ton boulders that had been brought to keep the ocean and Coronado money apart. Each girl had a 16-ounce beer stashed in a nook between the rocks in a plain wrapper. They picked up their cans, sipped quickly, and then hid them again. The wind ruffled their hair, and the sunny afternoon air was balmy, with just a hint of moisture as an offshore breeze started toward land. They absently flicked their cigarettes, blew the smoke up high to one side so it wouldn't linger in their hair, and watched the young men heading down to surf.

Brandy felt dazed.

"Does Jeremy know?"

"Not yet. Men can't figger this kinda shit out on their own."

Rosie nodded. She was small, with smooth dark skin and dark eyes and long black hair that turned mahogany at the ends, where it was a year or more old. She wore gang sister clothing--black canvas slip-on shoes, white socks, gray work pants rolled up at the cuffs, a clean white t-shirt, a gold chain and crucifix given by her boyfriend who was doing time for armed robbery. Rosie was a good soul.

"I gotta do something though. Problem is, I don't know which one of Jeremy's friends is the dad."

"You could have the baby. Get welfare. Ain't much, but what you got now?"

"I want to stay in school."

"I know," Rosie said softly, with deep regret. She'd dropped out over a year ago. Didn't look like she'd go back. Maybe do her equivalency one day. But better be quick--they'd had this conversation many times--'cause when Junior gets out, look out. A kid every year. Well, there's always the different clinics."

"Can't," Brandy said. She was thinking of the old white haired lady. Sure way to bring the county down, the cops, the whole bureaucracy, and wind up in a house full of rules. No smoking, no drinking, no--no way.

"Okay," Rosie said, knowing Brandy's situation. "My sister knows somebody."

"How much?"

"Two hundred. Cash. If you don't got the cash, I can help."

"Thanks, Rosie, you're a bud."

"Done, girl."

They high-fived.

But things didn't go smoothly at all for Brandy.

First, Jeremy got shot in Riverside. Brandy was home alone, the day after her illegal abortion, feeling terrible stomach cramps and unable to get comfortable. She kept spotting her pads with blood. She was alarmed because she seemed to be bleeding more, not less. She kept groaning at this deep, rolling, twinging pain. She kept doubling over and sometimes the pain made her cry. Where was Jeremy? The phone rang and the minute she heard the authoritative, invasive, curt voice on the other end, she knew something terrible had happened. Tears sprang to her eyes and she absently pulled tissues from a box, dragging the box toward her as the tears rolled down her eyes and she dabbed them with a fistful of tissues. "Your brother is in critical condition. He has one bullet wound to the head and two to the abdomen. I'd like to talk with you about what he was doing where he got shot."

"Is he gonna live?" With a bullet wound to the head...

"They don't know yet, honey. I hope so, okay?"

She started crying loudly, uncontrollably. She heard the detective say "Go ahead, I'll wait," and she dropped the phone and threw herself across the couch wailing. Her gut seemed to have huge pliers turning in it, and it hurt to sob, but she couldn't control her tears. In the back of her mind the thoughts rolled by: call Rosie. get a car. somebody who can drive. what's the address? will we get lost? will he be alive?

In the ICU on the western side of the second floor of the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Medical Center in San Diego, equipment and sheet-draped bodies competed for cramped space with racks and stacks of electronic monitoring equipment. Male and female nurses in blue smocks sidled among their patients, fingers constantly busy at the exacting task of maintaining lives that lay on the edge of existence.

One of the patients was smaller than the others. She was a scrawny girl of 14 with thick dark hair with amber highlights. Her skin color was a pasty yellow, and her eyes were closed and shadowed as she lay dying. Her caretakers were slowing that process down and trying to reverse it. But she was dying.

By the bedside stood a tall, thin, angular woman of about 70 with white hair tied severely back. The woman wore a plain wheat-colored coat and an equally simple brown leather purse with hand straps. Her face, which looked young for her age, was stony, impassive, as she hovered over her granddaughter. She wished she'd known that her daughter had run off. She'd known about her son-in-law being in jail. She hadn't known about the conditions under which her granddaughter had been living, or she'd have come sooner. A little Mexican friend of the child's had called. Wild little girl, Rosie, whose scary brother had picked the white-haired lady up at Lindbergh Field in a souped up car and took her to the hospital. Tattooed kid with gang clothes, somber and polite.

The stern lady reached out and touched her granddaughter's wrist. "I will be praying for you," she whispered. And for your brother, she thought, as a nurse led her outside. She was tired from her flight, and grieving because her other trip, today, would be to a morgue. And she had so much to prepare for Jeremy's funeral. A doctor waited outside the ICU, extending a hand. "How are you, Ma'am?"

She shook his hand and looked away, unable to answer.

"I know this is hard for you. Your granddaughter is gravely ill."

"Will she live?" she whispered.

The doctor looked distressed.

As he began his vacation, California Governor Louis Cardoza, 49, centrist Democrat, had little more on his mind than making love with his wife later in the morning--probably after a swim and maybe before a rub-down--he'd decide later.

On this first morning of his vacation, he'd already once sated his appetite for her firm, smooth skin. Still glowing from that and what she'd told him, he sat by the pool reading The Wall Street Journal, sipping black coffee, and munching hot buttered toast with a sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon. He felt great. The morning air smelled divinely of leaves and flowers, birds twittered, and the day was still full of promise. Louis had lined up a round of golf with his old law partners this afternoon. Meredith had just this morning told him, in the middle of their wake-up sex, that she was pregnant with their first child. He felt a deep sense of pride, almost--well, use the word, he told himself inwardly, go on, you're a Latin lover--machismo.

Meredith, wearing a white terrycloth jacket over her black bikini, walked out of the tiled entrance of their mansion. A medium-height brunette, she was a tanned Girl Next Door. Louis watched with pleasure as, back straight, she strode on firmly muscled legs. Her long straight hair glowed with a mahogany warmth. Her stomach was flat; her breasts were firm and round, her gluteal muscles tight handfuls, her thighs trim and dark like forest honey--almost Latina, he thought lovingly. Despite her athletic buffness, her face had a delicate, finely proportioned beauty. Her lower jaw was full and strong, while her lips and nose were delicate and expressive, her eyes large and dark, her forehead high and clear. She carried herself proudly, with a quiet happiness, and Louis never tired of her.

Meredith carried a big red towel as she walked on cork heels toward the bar cart. Today was the staff afternoon off, which meant the Cardozas had to look after themselves; it also meant privacy. The gates and windows of the mansion were electronically guarded.

Off came the white robe, and up went Lou's appreciation. She had a glow today--she was finally, after years of trying, an expectant mother. She stepped to the diving board and favored him with a fond, conspiratorial smile--like, wait until I get you into bed again. She executed a sharp dive into the deep end. That was Meredith for you--sharp moves, and never afraid of the deep end. Of course, she came from old wealth, unlike himself, and she understood perfectly what she must do. It was bred into her. She came from a long line of senators and millionaires. Her extended family had vinyards in Napa with designer labels; newspapers in several Midwestern cities; stables in Kentucky; department stores in Hartford, Manhattan, Boston, and Philadelphia; a truck factory in Michigan, and so on.

As Meredith swam up and down the huge pool in graceful strokes, Louis put down his newspaper and watched her. Unlike so most men he knew, he did not cheat on her; well, not any more. He loved her deeply, and he could not understand why other men, married to women even more beautiful than Meredith, would risk their love casually. At 35, she was a junior partner in Cassoli Johns Jenkins Mackensie and generally worked out of Santa Barbara.

As he watched the tanned skin on the backs of her legs glisten wetly, and her glutes twisting as she cut strong strokes in the water, the phone on the table interrupted Lou's reverie. Now what the hell could that be? He'd issued strict orders not to be disturbed except in a great emergency. Usually he carried either a lapel com button, or a pocket cell, or a wrist appliance--but today he wanted to be out of touch, tethered to the world only by one ancient cordless telephone. Irritated, he picked up.

It was his chief of staff, Meredith's cousin Teddy Warington, calling from Sacramento. Teddy's voice was rapid fire, anxious: "Louis, John Dunstan has been killed in a plane crash. Hamilton called here--he's looking for you; flying down from Chicago to see you."

"What?" Louis sat bolt upright, swinging his legs around to place his feet on the firm concrete. Dunstan was the opposition Middle Class Party's white knight, their best shot at the White House this election year. Dead? Teddy didn't know that he, Louis, had met several times with Hamilton over the past year or two. Hamilton had dangled various offers if he defected to MCP, and Louis had listened.

Teddy repeated: "Hamilton's flying down to see you. He'll be landing in Santa Barbara any time now. If I can guess what he's after, don't do it. For God's sake, Louie, I beg you, don't."

"What do you think he's after?" Louis said absently, while his mind raced ahead of his cousin-in-law's words. Robert Lee Hamilton had founded the Middle Class Party just a few years ago, and people who'd stopped voting for the Democrats and Republicans were flocking to the MCP. Already, MCP had ten state legislatures and nine governorships--and more were expected to fall to them in the next midterm elections. "All politics is local," House Speaker Tip O'Neill had once remarked--and Robert Lee Hamilton, a billionaire industrialist with a vision for America, had taken that to heart. Unlike the abortive Perot campaigns of the previous century, RLH (as his fanatically loyal people, and many of his enemies, called him) took that to heart. He was building his way to Washington, he liked to say, on a highway of governorships and local offices. State legislatures were his bread and butter. A shy, reclusive man, he stayed out of the limelight while hordes of enthusiastic Joe Sixpacks went door to door talking up the Middle Class Party. No more one party pretending to be the party of the poor, and the other pretending to be the party of the rich--this was a party for the taxpayers on whose broken backs generations of waste and fraud had been carried. America had numerous "third parties," but only MCP was racing out in front, challenging the old pols. It was all but official that, to beat a coalition of MCP and Greens, among others, the Democrats and Republicans were floating a new idea: a combined ticket called the Old Constitution Party. Open primaries in numerous states smoothed the path in that direction. It was the only way, Louis and many like him thought, to keep the White House and the Congress. The scheme troubled him deeply, though he saw its logic. As a Latino, an outsider who had worked his way in, he didn't see the urgent need to preserve his own or the other ancient cadaver of a party. He'd won handily because of the population mix, but the traditionals were slipping badly in most other parts of the country.

Louis listened to what Meredith's cousin had to say, but firmly, though warmly, refused to make a commitment. "I'll just wait to see what Hamilton has to say."

After disconnecting, he walked to the pool in several crouching steps, and dove in. He swam up under Meredith, captured her in his arms, and smothered her squeals with a kiss.

After a moment, she gripped his shoulders. "What is it, darling? Something's up." In a lightly tanned face dotted with water droplets and fringed by wet dark brown hair, her dark eyes glittered with calculation that mirrored the rapidly winking chessgame going on in his stimulated mind. He was shocked by the politician's death, felt bad for him, but had no time now to dwell on it. Time flowed, life moved on, and some opportunities came only once in a lifetime.

There was a time when Luis Cardoza did not have enough to eat, and he forced himself never to forget where he'd come from, because that was the root of his power and success as a politician. One of eight children, he was playing hookey from school by eight and selling drugs by 10. At 12 he'd been in his first serious fight, a rumble in which a 14 year old girl was paralyzed from the waist down by an errant gunshot by an older boy in Luis's gang. At 13 he was acting as a lookout for two men robbing a convenience store, when someone threw a brick at the two men as they fled, but hit the boy instead. Luis, with a head injury that took years to heal, was sent to live with his protective and conservatively religious grandmother in Houston. Away from his crime-ridden home turf, he became an excellent student. Sheltered and cared for, he became an avid reader. He also developed a formidable interest in boxing. By the time he was 18, he was in competition for the regional Golden Gloves. Then his grandmother died and the time of sheltering was over, but he emerged from that period a changed person. He dropped out of school and started working by day. At night, he began boxing semi-professionally and then professionally for money. He married a young girl named Roberta and by the time he was 22, had two little girls. They were hardscrabble times, and he and his trainer often drove overnight in an old black car that spewed smoke--sometimes returning victorious from a bout, with a few thousand dollars, cheering and slapping fives; other times silently and broke, with Luis in the back seat, sulking, holding an icepack to his puffy jaw or bloody lip.

One day, Luis noticed the two blind men who came every day to sit in the shady corner of the gym while several dozen young men, most of varying shades of dark skin, worked out. There were a few whites, but mostly it was half black, half Latino. They might not get along on the streets, but in the gym it was all cameraderie, business, professional. The blind men were like saints. Both were blacks, white-haired in late middle age, but of a light skin color as if they had been transfigured. They smiled, sometimes like the light of wisdom, at other times like cackling children as they twisted their heads one way then the other to hear. Their smiley teeth shone in the gym's hazy light. Their milky eyeballs were wide open and staring into infinity. Both men had been boxers. Both had been blinded as young men, in vicious bouts, with poorly maintained equipment--old gloves whose cracked backs could tear the cornea off an eyeball when they connected with the force of a thrown rock. Neither of them betrayed any bitterness--it was their joy that made Luis's stomach turn. He turned away, resentful that any man would let himself become so helpless and then revel in it. He walked away and beat his sparring partner into a pulp, for which he was exiled from the gym for a month.

When that month was up, he and his trainer went on the road for a week. He won a thousand dollars fighting in Las Vegas and then drove to San Diego, where they'd lined up a fight at an old American Legion hall in the tough Southeast district. There, Luis slipped on a sweaty patch and took a right jab, left hook, right cross combination that left him unconscious for three days in a hospital.

When he awoke, and drove back to L.A. with his trainer, he returned home to find that one of his daughters--Mariela, 4, had died suddenly. Roberta was silent and immobile with grief, and aunts were caring for the younger daughter, Ana, 2.

The child--his daughter, his love, his future--lay in a drawer in the morgue, ice cold, oh God how cold, as he laid his face and his fists on her and cried from the heart out. How could they let her be this cold? And wearing only a thin paper cover? He held her thin face between his palms and begged her to open her eyes, to speak to him, to say goodbye, to forgive him for not having been there when she needed him. She was still expressionless when the morgue attendants gently but firmly pulled him away and pushed her back into the wall.

Luis flew into a rage of grief and anger, storming through the hospital overturning inboxes on desks until the security people arrested him. A doctor who had helped treat Mariela offered to speak with him.

--Why did my little girl die? Luis demanded.

--She had a high fever and secondary infections brought on by the adenovirus, said the doctor.

--Then why did she not receive medicine?

--She did, but it was too late.

--But my wife came to the hospital with her five days before she died.

--They were turned away because they had no insurance.

--In this country a child can be left to die because she don't have insurance?

--I'm sorry, don't yell at me, I didn't make it so.

--This is one sick country that lets children die.

The security people were going to send for the police, but the doctor had pity and walked with Luis to the side door. The night was like a great bandage, wrapped around the hole in Luis's heart. Luis and the doctor spoke in whispers for a few minutes, as if time stood still, and why should it not upon the death of a princess, a girl with bright lively eyes and teeth like little porcelain squares?

--I wish we could have done more.

--I wish I could at least have been here, but I was on the road.

--You work in sales or something?

--Boxing.

--That's a nasty gash on your ear.

--I just spent couple days in the hospital.

After a silence he added, thinking of the blind men smiling up into space:

--I'm going to find a way. I'm going to fight this system all the way to the top.

--I'm sorry.

--They let my little girl die because we didn't have ten bucks. And they think this is okay...people who tip the shoeshine boy ten bucks without thinking about it.

The doctor did not offer to help, but made understanding body language. Of course they took courses in how to do that. The doctor shook Luis's hand and walked away, like a ghost in his long white coat, shoulders hunched as if burdened.

Luis could not stand to be still, so instead of calling a cab, he walked over ten miles to get home. During that ten mile walk he was like a drunk, staggering through intersections, not hearing the shouts of drivers who'd had to brake hard. He still had nagging headaches from the fight--same kind of headaches he'd get as a kid at his grandma's after getting hit on the head with the brick--and he knew there was no future for him in boxing. He remembered the blind men, and shuddered. He wanted to wage war on the system, the nation, that had done this to Mariela. He lived in the only industrialized nation without a civilized health care system. He wanted to tear the walls down, to kill the mean-spirited white men who clutched power to themselves. But the country was already tearing itself apart, with militias battling in the woods, and depression making people desperate. He thought about joining the Muslim faith, because a man named Jamal Mustafa was in the process of toppling the corrupt kings of the Middle East and taking the oil away. Good. Take the oil from the Americans, he thought. I'm too poor to even own a car, so what do I care if they all walk? But he'd seen too much violence to not know the hopelessness of the violent path. There had to be some other way to honor his little girl.

It was never the same again with Roberta. She was consumed with grief, and later more and more with self-pity. During the next year or two, Ana stayed with one of Roberta's sisters, and Luis lived briefly with her because he had no place else to go. He still loved Roberta, but not in the same way. He had brief flings with other women and stopped thinking of himself as married. But also during that period he rediscovered the joy of reading. And some higher agency took him past the local community college, where the very scent of books lured him into the administrative offices and to the realization that he could have an education almost for free. Given his mixed scholastic background, the school officials were amazed that he could read fluently, and that he easily challenged the entrance requirements because of his many hours of reading.

Luis vowed to change the system from within. He was Anglo-looking enough and handsome; he made his way. More and more Latinos voted these days--a formidable force to reckon with in the Southwest. Even before finishing his degree in business administration, majoring in health care delivery, he changed his first name to Louis, to be less scary to white people, and ran for a small office--health inspector--and won.

During those years he'd teamed up with the beautiful, aggressive, and determined young Anglo lawyer from Montecito, Meredith Warington. Their affair began as a fling, he taking her as a trophy, she likewise bagging him for his power and eloquence. They found they couldn't walk away from each other. They were intoxicated by one another. Against her family's wishes, she married the poor boy from the barrio; she was his wife, his lawyer, his strongest partner, his right hand, his Friday. Together they reached the governorship.

In twelve years he'd gone from that little rickety house in Southeast San Diego, where they couldn't pay for medicine, to living in a mansion where he could swim in a pool with this woman who could be a fashion model.

His former wife had married a taxi driver in Pomona and taken Ana there to live. One of Luis's regrets in life was that he did not spend more time with Ana as a child--she was now 14 and estranged from him. He tried to see her sometimes, but it was always depressingly uncomfortable, even politically embarrassing. Roberta had gotten heavy, had more kids, gotten dumped by the taxi driver, and was now living with some guy who brought home decent pay as a foremen of laborers--Carlos, his name was, silent guy, treated Roberta and Ana okay. Louis often invited Ana up for a weekend, but she had never agreed to come.

But Meredith would bear him a new family. In the pool, he embraced Meredith passionately, and she responded. In the privacy of their garden, in the warmth of their jacuzzi, he stripped off her lower garment. She helped him, kicking her bikini bottom off, and eagerly pulling him into her hollow where life began. He pushed, pushed, pushed, and she held the hair on his head in her fists. Eyes closed in concentration as if she were counting, she let him lightly rock her, as if she were riding a horse. She did not let go of his hair. Aroused, rising in passion, Louis held her by the thighs while she sat on the rim. Louis closed his eyes too, and listened to the slapping of the water between them, and the whispered slapping of their firm, flat bellies together. When she moaned softly, he held her tightly against himself while lifting one of her muscular thighs and rotating it smoothly so that in a second she stood with her back to him, resting her face on folded hands on the brick-red pavers while he rocked on, enjoying the sight of her tight buttocks quivering with each impact. Her cries became hoarse, outraged, repetitious. He turned her again so that they stood in the water face to face. Her smooth, perfect face was against his, her tongue in his mouth, her fingers in flashes of red nail polish alternately pinching his nipples and hers. He climbed up on the pavers and leaned back so that she was riding him, her face contorted in ecstasy. Thrusting groin to groin, moaning, they climaxed together. She fell limply upon him and he held her close, running his hands over the fullness of her breasts and thighs. They would make babies together, this beautiful way. Louis lay back and smiled happily into the sun-filled, shady magnolias while Meredith lay beside him on a towel, drying in the sun and catching her breath.

The years of Louis's rise had been eventful for the United States.

First, there had been the continuing, endless squabbling between the nation's two super-parties. Clinton had been payback for the endless hearings on Iran Contra, the indictments of seemingly everyone on or trying to be on Reagan's cabinet at one time or another--Ray Donovan, Ed Meese--and even more piquant as a payback for the Nixon impeachment vote. The 2000's had seen efforts by both parties to bring each other's leaders to every conceivable court of justice. National politics had become chess among lawyers, threatening to supplant Sunday football as a blood sport.

Second, Robert Lee Hamilton had begun challenging the national budgets created by his enemies in the Democratic and Republican parties. "No wonder," he said one evening during a MCP rally in Atlanta, "that no third party can get elected. The Republicans and the Democrats have the biggest illegal and unconstitutional reelection slush fund in the world--taxpayer dollars, and the Social Security trust fund, which has been drained of every last penny in each budget for so many years that everyone thinks this is normal. One Senate Majority Leader caused $1.5 billion to be embezzled to build, in his home state, in support of his reelection, naval vessels the Navy did not need, did not want, and begged not to have built. A House Speaker likewise embezzled nearly $400 million to build C-130 airframes in his home district, for his reelection, that the Air Force did not want, did not need, and begged not to be built. This happens all the time and has been going on for generations. This, in a nation whose ships often can't sail and whose planes can't fly for lack of funds for spare parts. This theft and pilferage can actually affect our combat readiness--but the generals and admirals are essentially powerless--all they can do is beg, and hope to get. These are the kinds of situations we want to change. How can our leaders steal ten or fifty billion dollars, when one third of our children have absolutely no access to health care, as do a similar percentage of pregnant women?" Hamilton's pointed and relentless legal attacks, fronted via the MCP Congress members, as well as MCP governors and state legislatures, crippled the two superparties. But more than that: there was serious talk of a Second Constitutional Convention. Things were so serious. With the shock in world oil markets, with the stubbing of U.S. toes around the world, the country had slipped into a long and severe recession. Crime, poverty, rioting, disintegration of law and order, all out war among some militia groups, bombings--these became the commonplace of headlines. Many Americans had lost faith in the system; many had stopped voting in what they felt were sham elections for an antiquated political dynasty of two 19th Century parties that had generations ago lost any meaning or edge or mission, and only fought to maintain their hold on power, much as the PRI had held its morbid hand on the neck of Mexico for generations.

Third, there had been Gulf II--a war in which two ships were sunk, a thousand sailors died, and the world's surviving superpower was demoted from that role. Jamal Mustafa, protege of Moammar Khadafi, had been elected ruler of Libya. Mustafa, a profound hater of the West, a fervent Arabist, and one who found it convenient to wear the mantle of an Islamist, immediately conquered Sudan and Tunisia. Educated in Egypt, and wise in the ways of history, he adapted the better methods of the last Islamic empire to rule the Arab world--the Turks. But he was an Arab, not a Turk, and he did not come as a foreign oppressor. He fostered national governments rather than destroying them, and thus, as Great Chieftain in the manner of a desert conqueror, he was welcomed first into Algiers, where he promised to bring relief from years of civil war, and then in Morocco, where he paid obeisance to the king. Soon he got a similar welcome in Cairo--and, momentously, the Islamic Arab Republic (I.A.R.) was born. By now, every western-supported king, emir, and sheik in the oil countries was trembling, eyeballing Jamal Mustafa in terror--and with good reason. Soon he attacked Saudi Arabia, in a skirmish capturing a string of U.S. made missile armed PT boats. It was clear that another row of dominoes was about to drop, and the President of the United States, while drumming up the ghosts of the Gulf I coalition, sent two carrier battle groups to scare Jamal Mustafa. Instead, the American ships were surprised by two fleets sent to aid the I.A.R.--a Chinese battle group, and a Iranian battle group. Both of the latter were armed with very high second tier equipment, and their announced purpose was to support Jamal Mustafa and level the playing field. Both China and Iran had made momentous oil finds, and did not need Arab oil, while the West still pathetically craved it.

Tehran, in particular, wanted to scare the Americans, so one of their ships launched a nuclear-tipped missile over the U.S. fleet, aimed to fly over the U.S. supply station on Diego Garcia, and splash down harmlessly in the Indian Ocean near the 15th parallel. The gesture would clearly demonstrate that a U.S. carrier battle group could be wiped out by, say, a megaton blast in its proximity. The gesture not only sent that signal, but the missile's trajectory was short, and the detonation occurred within a mile of a missile frigate, the U.S.S. John Hampton, approaching Diego Garcia. The Hampton vanished without a trace--vaporized.

The U.S. Navy went into first class battle standby, as did the entire U.S. defense forces, and those of many U.S. allies from Australia to the U.K. to Germany.

For several days, while U.S. ships withdrew to put distance between themselves and the Sino-Iranian fleet--and therefore more time to blast incoming missiles from the sky--the President wavered on the verge of retaliation by which a Chinese ship would be sunk. The President, weakened by attacks from the House and the relentless inquisition of the press over various scandals, including the budget, took the issue to Congress. Should the U.S. declare war on China and Iran?

Congress--already paralyzed with divisive hearings, allegations, and counter-allegations--argued for two weeks while Jamal Mustafa sat openly laughing on Tripoli television. The Iranians and Chinese remained in place and did not back down.

The bitter reality sank in that the U.S. could well continue to deploy its forces all over the world--at the risk of having those forces nibbled out of existence. No longer could it be said that the sun never set on America's commitments around the world. The world's regional powers, armed with high-quality second-tier equipment from Brazil, South Africa, China, Iran, and India, were capable of dealing heavy blows to the qualitatively superior U.S. forces. The President made a somber speech, saying that Congress had no "will" and he had no "mandate" to risk U.S. service members and ships in ill defined wars, especially fights picked by formerly Third-World upstarts.

U.S. Navy planes sank the flagship of the Chinese fleet. Then, as the Chinese and the Iranians made ready to attack and escalate, the U.S. fleet sailed home to CONUS. The Chinese and Iranians stood down.

The press had the final word: The U.S. had ceased to be a superpower. The U.S., they said, was now a regional power.

The President then enumerated a new "doctrine," in which he declared that the U.S. could no longer pay the lion's share of defense costs anyway, and would now remain just as strong as before, through a system of east-west alliances (ANZUS/European Union) and north-south alliances (CANUS/Latin American Union).

Gulf II was over--and everyone in the world knew that it was only a matter of time until Gulf III began. Jamal Mustafa could be expected to linger as Saddam Hussein had in a previous decade--with a difference; where Saddam had been a brutal clown, Jamal was a brilliant tactician, strategian, diplomat--and conqueror.

The outrunners came through Montecito around noon, two square-looking sedans full of men and women in bullet-proof business suits--Hamilton Industries' praetorian guard, the cream of the billionaire industrialist's private security forces.

The security detail got out while Louis and Meredith watched from a high, secure balcony. Louis let the garages open electronically, and the two cars slipped inside. There, he knew, they would fan out with assault rifles and gas masks, checking every corner to make sure it was safe for America's king-maker to enter.

Soon, a dark motorcade of six armored black limousines rolled up the narrow streets of old Montecito, windows darkened so no assassin could see which car contained the prize. One by one the cars passed by. Then, in a surprise move, one turned suddenly into the garage and the steel security door swung down, almost clipping the car's rear bumper before locking into the concrete floor.

Meredith and the security guards left Louis and Robert Lee Hamilton alone in the kitchen.

A bar of sunlight fell through heavy muslin curtains and gleamed on the yellow enameled tea service Meredith had lovingly left on the stylish plexiglass table with chromed frame. Louis poured them each a cup. The other man accepted lemon, but not sugar.

Robert Lee Hamilton was a sparse man of 60--thin, energetic, looking more like 40 except for the ring of closely shorn white hair around a gleaming yellowish skull surmounted by the white whisps of what must have been a shock of dark hair in his youth. He had a large forehead, with still-dark eyebrows that were like scabbards under which fiercely intelligent, dangerous, almost scarily brilliant eyes burned with energy and ideas--and with insight. People said the billionaire seemed to look right through one. There were both a piercing coldness in his gaze, and a soothing toleration for those less gifted. RLH had earned a Ph.D. in Physics at 20 from UC Berkeley and gone to work for engineering companies, first as a novice employee, then as a consultant. Soon he'd had his own company, and the rest was history. Forty years out of college, he commanded a world-class fortune. He still sat on the boards of over 40 companies, more as a hobby than anything, but his consuming passion for the past decade had been politics.

"We lost a great man," Hamilton said.

"Yes." Louis could see the obvious. He himself still reeled from the shock as he thought about this upstart party's most charming and charismatic hero, the comer on the stage of presidential politics, burnt beyond recovery in a flaming airplane crash.

"We have to act fast," Hamilton said. He had not touched his tea, which steamed unseen under the incandescence of that gaze.

"We," Louis said, feeling an aura of unreality.

"We've talked before. This time, I come with a concrete offer in hand. I want you to run for Vice President. I don't see any problem about us getting it. I think the Old Constitution Party is the last hurrah of the Democrats and the Republicans. They're ending their sham and joining up because it's the only way they can capture the White House. Even at that, they need MCP's votes, and the only way to get those is to run a split ticket."

Louis was almost breathless. "Isn't that risky?" he whispered.

"Life is full of risks. As a politician, you know that."

"Yes. But I have always been grounded firmly--"

"Yes, I know--national health care. We'll deliver that. Louis, we want a Second Constitutional Convention, but not the way the militias want it. Not a dramatic rewrite, but ten amendments, under very controlled conditions--get in, do the job, get out. The only way we can get it done is to offer five amendments to the Left, five to the Right, things they can tolerate of each other. That's the only way to get the 3/4 majorities we need to ram it through. One of those amendments will be universal health care. Your life's dream. Your promise to your little daughter Mariela."

The floor seemed to sway under Louis's feet. "Why me? Why not any one of the hundred great men and women of your party? Why a Democrat?"

RLH's radiance increased as he beamed with humor at the beauty of his insight. "It's not good enough to be good, or even great. Politics is the art of building, tediously, shaking hands, door to door." He gathered his fingers together and pounced them from spot to spot on the table top "...but that's not enough. There has to be the art of keeping everyone off balance. The great gesture. Yes, you're right, I could nominate Thurow of New York or Fassilli of Michigan or Landers of Lousiana. Great governors. But think. Our party has no presidential, no national experience. We have to transcend."

"I have no national experience. Never been in Congress."

"Yes, but think, Louis, think. First, we get the California governorship. Plus, a major defection. You are one of what, 100 guys your parties might run for prez or veep one of these decades?"

They'd been over that before, but never in this context, Louis thought. They'd talked about how, even though he and Meredith were voted most likely to create the next Camelot, he really had little or no shot at the big ring. John Dunstan's death earlier in the day had changed the equation completely.

"You are my pick," Hamilton said. "I'll go to Fasilli next, probably, but I stand here before you, so to speak, with my hat in my hand, asking you. Please, do it for yourself, for Mariela, for Meredith, for me, for my party, for your new party, your country."

The clock in the kitchen ticked. And ticked.

"Yes," Louis said. "I have no choice. This is an opportunity I can't let pass."

RLH beamed as he reached out to shake Louis's hand. "We'll make the announcement together this afternoon. Will Meredith understand?"

"We talked about it before you came."

"Then you knew. Good. I want you both in conservative business attire, and looking your best. You'll be our movie star couple. We'll sweep the dinosaurs from power."

Cover's assignments came in regular succession in these busy times.

He owned ten acres in the Appalachian Mountains, not far from Colfax, Kentucky, paid up by someone he'd never met. He had a woman here, commonlaw under Free State law not recognized by the U.S. or Kentucky, who kept up the five bedroom, two-bath, two-garage house. The only part of the house she was not allowed was in the basement, where he kept his office, his communications center, and his armory. That part of the house was booby-trapped with enough exlosives to send the entire house an eighth of a mile into the air. The woman knew this and had been instructed to leave the house if the Rots raided.

The woman was quiet and didn't seem to mind his being around. Of course he was gone most of the time on one mission or another, and she didn't seem to mind that either. She'd been thoroughly checked out and found to be loyal, if somehow broken inside, for she was the widow of a militia officer from Idaho, shot in the line of duty while liberating illegally minted dollars from a federally insured bank along with two other patriots. There'd been a standoff, and she'd lost her two children besides her husband. Sometimes she wandered about the ranch in a daze, but at other times she kept up a furious pace of housework. She could not bear to be around children, but she was like a Francis of Assisi with the animals around the former farm. Kept a couple of thoroughbred bitches who regularly bred pups that she sold around town to farmers and hunters. Once in a while, Cover had sex with her. Usually he kept his distance, and she seemed grateful for that.

Cover had several names. One was the phony one on his land deed, which was the same on the Free State paperwork on the woman. The oldest was the one by which he'd been born, which he never thought about. He'd been orphaned as a child, and the name was the only thing he had from his folks. Nobody got to know that, only he. He'd been shuffled around between foster homes and orphanages. Usually that lasted a while and then something happened, like the cat. He'd been 13, and the family's daughter 15. The family had let him adopt a cat, because they thought it would make him happy, and therefore normal. He hated the cat, feared its malign stare and its poker-faced, predatory gaze. Perhaps, he thought, he is too much like myself. One day the cat threw up on his bed. He tried to snatch him up and run to the door. The cat scratched him bloody down one arm. Next thing, he was in the back yard swinging the cat by the neck on a rope. He swung him in a great circle for at least a half hour, and he must have been long dead, but he kept swinging him in that steady, silent circle, probably 30 feet in circumference, curled up with his head tucked and his paws limp like a passenger sleeping on a jet, until the screaming from the door brought him out of his reverie, screaming from the door way all together like a chorus, and of course that was how that ended.

When he was 18, Cover tried to enlist in the Marines and was rejected after some pencil and paper tests. The I.Q. thing went fine, and he was tops in physical, but something about his attitude on things prevented them from needing him just then. So, being alone in the world without a hook to hang his hat, he'd hitched a ride out to the Cascades Mountains and walked into the woods until he ran into some mountain men who directed him to the nearest militia post--ironically, in a suburb of Boise. There his life had come together. He did a three-year stint with what they called the Regular Militia, or Well-Regulated Militia, which was kind of like a real Marine Corps not ordered and twisted and mucked around by Liberals and Rots. There he distinguished himself and was sent for officer training at Cable College in western Montana.

The years at Cable were the high point of his life. In with hundreds of like-minded young men, he'd played football and studied hard. He loved the pomp and ceremony, marched ardently in parades. They had a way of playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever"--in fact, any patriotic song, in a kind of heavy, brooding, slow manner that made you ball your fists and nearly cry as you marched. That music had tragedy rather than joy in it, but also grand uplifting energy that made you love your flag and country and be willing to die for them. He'd come out with a B.S. in Engineering and a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Montana Free State Militia (Regular). The Regular part referred to the word "well-regulated" in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Cable was proud of its sons--no daughters here, no Liberals, and nobody with dark skin or weird eyes--and its sons were proud of Cable, none more so than Cover.

Not far from Cable was a Federal Military Reserve that was actually under militia control. At the John Brown Militia Reserve, in the freezing mountains where dark-green pines clung to life under heavy folds of snow in winter, Cable's young officer cadre did maneuvers and exercises with the growing NCO cadre of the First Service, drawn from disenchanted young patriotic men all around the country. It almost seemed sometimes difficult to think the Rots didn't know about the John Brown Military Reserve, as the First Service called it, but it turned out there were just enough of the right people in the Pussy Army to keep it under wraps. Wouldn't need to go on forever, anyway--the Second Constitutional Convention was just around the corner and things would be set right.

The call came when Cover was riding on his old horse. He sat on the horse, lost in thought, dreaming ahead into the years when he would wear his uniform proudly and openly on the streets. Wrapped in a frayed nylon poncho and cowboy-style hat, he was oblivious to the cool rain that came down in long gentle strips and ever so softly hissed on his poncho, like a woman trying to get his attention. He thought about the woman a little and wondered if she'd laid in a good oak fire in the main room. He wanted her to lie on the bearskin with him, both of them naked, while the dogs slept in the kitchen, on the tiles by the kitchen hearth. She would lie on her back, her eyes lost in some dream, while absently rubbing her mound with her two index fingers to make herself wet so it would be easy on both of them.When the feeling aroused him, he would make the slightest gesture and she would roll over to take him into her. He had never lost his temper with her, though she feared him a little. But the first time, she'd put her palm against his chest and held him away. Communicating without words--though she could speak with her mouth, she spoke powerfully with those flat, bitter eyes--she taught him to fondle her gently for a few minutes. She taught him to rub tongues with her and when he did that he could feel her breathing change. Okay, so that was how it was done, he thought, and it wasn't much to ask. He was thinking about these things when his cell phone warbled.

"Yeah."

The familiar voice of his handler, whom he'd never met: "Got mail for you."

"Okay."

He drove all thought of the woman from his mind, wheeled his horse around, and headed for the house.

In Gary, Indiana, a highly secret meeting took place at the Condor Hotel, in a bridal suite on the fifth floor. Unknown to most of the participants, the Second Service had each of the four rooms bugged and under surveillance the entire time.

Behind shuttered windows and guarded doors, the paramount chiefs of seven major militias met for the first time ever under one roof, all together. They represented a force of over 35,000 armed and trained patriots from four corners of the 48 contiguous states. It was, an undercover officer of the Second Service thought while watching and listening, the first time he'd ever seen such a thing--remarkable all the more for the absence of weapons. These guys loved and worshipped guns and munitions, and no meeting was ever complete without a veritable arms bazaar. Not this time. Even the bodyguards carried only licensed concealed handguns. It was even fairly certain that none of the chiefs had the next best thing--a fleet of cars filled with soldiers and rockets, machine guns, and grenades. The stakes here were too high. Nobody wore camo--it was a strictly dark suit and modest tie affair.

At the heart of the matter was Robert "Strack" Bennett, 49, a retired Army Infantry colonel and now a self-proclaimed general in the shifting and murky waters of militia affairs. The Second Service, an entity unknown to the militia movement, in no way opposed the operations of these people, as long as they did not get out of control.

The men running the Second Service, and the rest of the dark machinery waiting in the shadows, had been around a long time. They represented some of the oldest money in America, some of the quietest and richest ultra-conservative Christian churches, and some of the most dutifully serving flag officers. As long ago as the Franklin Roosevelt administration, they had considered the country to have been taken over by Communists. They considered the man in the Oval Office to be the Reigning Red, and some of them--among the most famous names in America--put sums of money toward marching an army to the Capital and taking back America. That plan had foundered in a sea of weakness, liberalism, and betrayal. The current effort would not.

Bennett, the "coveree," was a formidable force in the militia movement. He had the stature, the guts, the bullying power, the persuasiveness--in short, the charisma--of a national leader. He had managed, through outreach from his Kansas Militia, to bring together the hopes and dreams of angry, disenfranchised men all around the country.

The Second Service had good reason to think that the F.B.I., and the rest of Pussy law enforcement, had no idea this meeting was taking place. That was just as well, for the Rots would take the full brunt of whatever happened here.

Bennett, a big man, graying around the temples but still physically robust, did most of the talking. Whether he sat or stood, he towered over everyone in the room. His voice was firm, strong, and convinced. And convincing. After four hours of conversation, the men agreed to take certain actions. They all rose to pledge allegiance to the flag in the now famous Flag Salute: left hand over the heart, right hand raised, right hand held in imitation of a pistol aimed at the sky.

Afterward, Bennett took a side trip known to almost nobody.

He had a mistress in St. Louis, and at odd times he'd slip away from his guards and visit this woman. Accompanied by only one close bodyguard, Bennett slipped out of his hotel room in Gary. Together the two men drove to a small private airport at the edge of town, where they hired a pilot and his plane for the slightly over 2 hour trip to Missouri.

It had rained lightly, but a fresh wind had scoured the runway dry but for some puddles here and there. It was mid-afternoon, and the sky was darker than it should ordinarily have been. Huge ashen cumulus clouds made mountains on the horizon.

In the airport's small lounge area, about 20 persons of all ages had gathered for one of the commuter hops to Indianapolis. Bennett and his guard moved through this crowd unrecognized, except by one individual they did not know: Cover.

Nobody noticed the lean, preppy young blond man in his blue blazer, white shirt, school tie, gray slacks, and black loafers. Cover waited with a newspaper rolled up in his left hand, and a tan raincoat thrown over his arm. He had a briefcase near his right leg, and in his right hand a can of cola that he'd just bought at the concession stand.

Cover looked passive and disinterested as the small plane taxied down the runway. The plane cranked up its engine to a loud buzzing pitch and lifted off with a drone like that of a giant insect. The powerful engine echoed for two or three minutes and then dwindled out of earshot.

The commuter plane rolled to a stop, having just landed, and the passengers trouped out to board. Cover tossed his empty can into a trash can, picked up his briefcase, and joined the crowd.

A man came running from the control tower and spoke to the pilot, who stood near the open side door of the DeHavilland Twin Otter. The two men nodded. The captain kept up a passive face, while the other man dashed back to the control tower.

"Did you hear?" Cover overheard one passenger tell another. "That plane that just took off? Crashed a few miles from here. Everyone on board is dead."

The Cessna was making good headway, flying with an easterly wind, and climbing to 5,000 feet, when the engine began to sputter.

"God damn!" the pilot yelled in a loud, scared voice. There was genuine terror in his eyes as he gripped the stick.

The plane began to lurch.

The pilot frantically pumped his hand instruments, trying to keep fuel flowing, trying to unblock the fuel lines, but the sputtering got worse.

Bob Bennett had been a soldier all his life. He'd fought in battle and been decorated. He'd been scared with the rest of them, and he'd faced death before. Each time, he'd been grateful of reprieve. Now he prayed to the powerful God of his Judeo-Christian heritage for another reprieve. He had so much good work to do in a country that needed him badly. He'd had the blessings of a dozen ministers before setting off on his mission to Gary. If now was the moment, well, God had his reasons. Still, he sat terrified, white as if he'd been bleached, his knuckles bloodless as he clutched the armrests with shaking hands. His body guard began to cry.

The pilot held the radio mike with one hand while working his instruments with the other. "Tower! Mayday! Mayday! I think I got water in my gas. We're going down!"

The plane abruptly grew peaceful as the engine died.

The pilot did his best to steer as it plunged ever faster toward the ground. He simply did not have the power required to move the plane fast enough to generate a laminar airflow over the tops of the wings.

In the last two or three seconds before impact, the plane was spinning along its yaw axis. The impact, when it came, drove the shattered pieces fifteen feet into the earth in a farmer's yard. For a few minutes, the field was enveloped in a hot ball of burning aviation gas from the full tank, and everything--the seats, the bodies, the luggage, was scorched on the surface, but enough would remain for dental I.D.'s. The good soldier Bennett had failed to win his last reprieve.

The DeHavilland Twin Otter was grounded for an hour while specialists checked its fuel and found it to be pure. Cover waited with the other passengers, trudging patiently from the tarmac into the lobby. The concession stand did a brisk business in candy and popcorn and soft drinks. Cover had not counted on being stuck here, but an hour or so would not hurt him. Even if the militia goons showed up, they would not know to go after him. He considered dumping his briefcase, and thought better of it. Why panic? And sure enough, in just over an hour, the De Havilland Twin Otter was checked out and cleared for takeoff. Aboard as it climbed into the darkening sky was Cover, straining like all the passengers to see any signs of distant wreckage or burning--and sure enough, there was the remnant of a dissipating cloud of ugly dark smoke to the east, soon lost in a marvellous orange and black marbling of sunset. Cover kept his briefcase firmly between his ankles, containing a baseball cap, one set of medium-sized tan-colored flight mechanic's overalls, and two tall, empty Evian bottles.