59
Understanding how the rich elitist bankers and corporatist cronies had already more than generously paid the nation’s senators and congressmen as well as members of the president’s constitutional advisement groups to do their will no matter what the people at large wanted, they expected nothing less than enthusiastic and rapid cooperation on the Constitutional Preservation Act. In fact, it was passed in less than thirty minutes, same as had happened with the Patriot Act.
The implementation of the two thousand page bill rapidly compromised the constitution. A near dictatorship run from the capitol in Washington which was already in operation was now bolstered legislatively.
If the Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act were bad, then the new bill in front of them was one thousand times worse. It was even more intrusive into the lives of Americans, taking away freedom of speech entirely. This new set of laws also provided an already dictatorial president with even greater dictatorial power whenever he might declare it necessary for his administration’s survival. It also gave the president unlimited powers to curtail gun ownership, censor news reporters and editors by enforcing the concept of pre-approved news stories to insure they were in-line with government objectives, and opened everyone within the nation’s borders to search and seizure without a court warrant. It even provided for the spying and bombing of citizens by anyone in government deeming it to be necessary and to provide a context for their domestic surveillance using the new drone technology. Another paragraph allowed the use of deadly gassing to end citizen protests and general unrest in any town, city, and county in the nation where it was deemed appropriate.
These were only the highlights. The low lights, no one needed to know. They were strictly classified to protect the government from the snooping eyes of the American people. That way Americans couldn’t protest them.
Since demonstrations and other gatherings of the populace that might embarrass members of the government were now generally forbidden in the usual sense of the word for the sake of national security there could no longer be protests of these laws. The bill would turn the nation into something very akin to East Germany in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
As a matter of fact, the government would have more rights to crush citizen dissent than had been given to the Stazi, East Germany’s notorious secret police. Government goons could now capture, imprison, torture, and kill any citizen in the name of national security. All other implied freedoms under this new set of laws were crushed in the name of total governmental control.
In this manner, America stood poised to enter an even worse stage in its ongoing dark age.
60
Will Sturm needed his usual oil change. His car edged Main Street with the caution that most drivers used only during times when they meandered the most suspect boulevards of life.
Will was a safe driver. He was employed at the local factory. His job was a piece of cake, and he’d been doing the same thing for seventeen years and never regretted it for a moment. His bank account was sweetly fat, and he was able to take vacations without busting the family budget.
Up ahead, Matt saw the end of his present journey. It was a filling station, one that specialized in oil changes, tires, and minor repairs. Will honked at the service door and a mechanic whose face was nearly obliterated with oil stains came out.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’ve never met you before,” Will said.
“This is my first day,” the mechanic said. “My name is Rob Gibson.”
“I’m Will Sturm. I need an oil change,” Will said.
Rob guided him until his car was positioned neatly over the vehicle lift.
“It’ll be about fifteen minutes, sir,” Rob said. “The waiting room is outside to the right.”
“Gotcha.”
Will headed out. He turned and walked slowly and confidently around the building. He knew exactly where the customer waiting room was located, and no one had to tell him. As he walked, Will took in the scene’s completely grubby ambiance. The place was quite a sight to behold. It always had been. Its tawdry condition was exactly what gave it a tinge of notoriety and was more than likely the reason that guys liked it better than women did.
Will Sturm always felt more secure in knowing that Matt’s filling station was still true to its nature. He expected nothing less. Even its doorway was delicately flavored with years of oil stained hand prints. The door’s dingy wooden surface seemed to contain more grease than three pounds of bacon. Torn seat covers on the rickety chairs revealed years of service to the weary waiting drivers who counted on Matt’s filling station to change their oil and get them on their way. The upside was how cheap it was to get service here. At Matt’s everyone got the lowest price in town. Its motto might have been, “No frills and low bills.”
Inside, the new mechanic who lied when he said his name was Rob Gibson, was under the car, messing with the oil drain. While the oil poured out into the bucket below, Rob hid a melange of plastic explosives along the edges of the gas tank. The blast would be huge, because Will Sturm’s tank contained a full eighteen gallons of gasoline. The plastic weighed seventeen pounds which was a lot. It’s explosion would be a big one. That was for certain. Maximum impact. Minimum cost. Kills. Thrills.
A few minutes later, Will Sturm paid his bill and picked up his keys. After he picked up his car, he was ready to rock and roll. He had no idea that the car behind him was driven by his mechanic, because he no longer looked like the carefully disguised grease monkey Will Sturm had met at the garage entrance. Instead, his face mask was changed.
Rob Gibson might even have really been James Stone in clever grease monkey drag, but if that were the case no one needed to know. That’s why Rob had disguised his face with a latex mask and his carefully applied oil smears which meandered here and there totally camouflaging his real features. Everything about Rob had been destroyed in an oil drum in back of the filling station where his clothes and papers had been set afire just before Stone donned his next identity as Troy Sutter. His Virginia drivers license had been made several days before on an HP color printer attached to Stone’s own laptop. He had used the computer camera to make his photo ID which included one with him wearing the mask he was now hiding behind. He had no fingerprints, because his hands were now semi-permanently covered with latex. The only prints to be found on the car were some he had made on his computer using FBI prints of felons. He had selected those of a terrorist who had escaped from a prison in Dubai. They had been carefully smeared across the steering wheel, keys, and knobs in the stolen car. Every piece of evidence led away from him and toward some innocent person whom he had selected as his scape goat.
After twenty minutes in the garage that morning, the explosives and cell phone trigger had been securely and carefully placed and checked. The car had been turned into a massive and effective bomb. It was more than powerful enough to bring down a skyscraper if exploded in just the right place inside an underground garage area. If exploded in the open, it could severely damage fifteen to twenty buildings causing several of them to collapse. The deaths either way were going to be massive.
James Stone felt the mask he had so carefully and artistically glued to his face. He had used such disguises many times in his line of work as a dedicated sniper. This was how he was able to make his getaways safely and never be discovered. The descriptions of the suspected perpetrator would be totally counter to his real looks which he was careful to hide from those who could harm him if they knew anything about him, especially his real description. James chuckled to himself. It was always so easy for him to slip in and out of characters who did the killing and those who simply walked quietly away with a totally different identity. Killing was a piece of cake if you were not sure of who you were, because your faces changed with each new environment you chose to deal with. He felt certain the law would never catch up to him, because he always made sure they never had a clue. In fact, the car he was driving was stolen. The plates we
re those of a car of the same model and color that had been recently demolished. Its serial numbers and VIN were now a part of the new car that he had made the stolen one into. He could never be traced, and he knew that quite well. He would get away with it both now and in the near future again and again. He always had.
Will Sturm pulled up to the huge factory where he worked. His parking space was right next to the building. More than 850 workers were busy inside, manufacturing chemicals for secret weapons programs. It was a top secret installation. None of those inside were aware they had been making poison gas. For years, they had been told they were making special polymers which were highly poisonous if inhaled. Sturm and his co-workers only knew that the chemicals were used in the making of plastics and that they were volatile and needed to be placed in air tight drums to protect the workers and their customers. In fact, unknown to the workers, the final products manufactured and housed in this factory were not only poisons but included several lines of viral agents to be used in clandestine CIA attacks on foreign powers. Will entered the building, flashed his worker’s badge and signed in.
“You are a bit late today, Will,” the guard said. “I’ll have to report you for it.”
“I’m not late. I took a personal hour off,” Will explained. “I got three hundred and fifty hours of personal time piled up, Mac. Maybe more.”
“Want to transfer some of them to me?”
“No. I think I’ll keep them.”
“Just joking,” Mac said. “If I had time off, it’d just mean I’d be getting even more nagging from my wife. You know how it is.”
“I have a good idea.”
Sturm made his way to the locker room. There, he dressed out into his chemical protection hood, gown, and shoes. He’d need them further inside to insure that he didn’t fall victim to the vapors that were regularly released from the chemicals he had to oversee. It could become a dangerous job, and some had died from it in the past. But for a low life like Will Sturm who only had a high school diploma, it was the job of a lifetime. He’d been at it for more than seventeen years, and it paid his bills. He was glad to have it. There was no way he would ever quit.
Will Sturm had even worked his way into the top secret security areas where a combination of toxins, gasses, and viruses were kept. Of course, these agents were labeled HAZARDOUS MATERIALS and nothing else. Only a series of long numbers and identifying bar codes insured that the cans of these agents went to the right places, persons, and nations. As a result, when things went right, no one was the wiser. In fact the city where Will Sturm was employed would have raised hell if it had ever found found out what was being manufactured, tested, warehoused, and shipped right there under their noses, and that a single mishap could take out everyone for the surrounding twenty-five miles or more depending upon weather conditions if the plant’s many walls of security were ever breached. Sturm’s life was a time bomb for himself, the 850 other factory workers, and the one hundred and fifty thousand people who lived in the vicinity of Will Sturm’s deadly workplace.
Sturm entered another super secure area. This one contained explosives. The one he had just passed through contained deadly bacteria, virus, and toxins. He showed his card, punched in his personal code and heard the security door lock release its security fix. He pushed the door open and entered. Here was what he knew as the automated canning facility. The cans were loaded by robotic equipment, and Will Sturm’s only job was to enter that facility in case of a breakdown, then to fix whatever had clogged the assembly line and start it up. In seventeen years, he had to do this four hundred and thirty eight times. In between, he was an observer and dispatching specialist who listed the serial numbers of the war materials passing through the system. Will thought for sure that he knew what the cans and boxes contained, but he really didn’t. In fact, he and all of the others including the executives thought they were making materials for plastics and paints. The less they knew the safer everyone was. That was the plan, and it had worked perfectly for almost two decades.
That was about to end.