That night Greg went out for a T-bone steak. The FBI followed him. As he returned home, an agent stopped him as he got out of his car.
“Why did you eat at the steak house tonight?” he asked. “Do you know someone there or something?”
“No,” Greg replied. “I ate there, because I knew you two were following me, so I did it as a favor to you.”
“So, what was the favor?”
“You guys got yourselves two of the city’s best T-bone steaks with all of the fixings for free using your FBI credit card,” Greg told him. “See, my little friends, it’s this way. I think about you guys. Whether you know it or not, I want to keep you happy.”
The agents laughed. This character was something else. “Well, I never!” the agent said to himself and let out a guffaw as Greg closed his door. This guy was all right, after all. Even the smelliest garbage truck had a silver lining somewhere. You just had to look at it long enough to find it.
Greg was Scot free. They had nothing on him. He had killed several times and gotten by with it. All they knew was that he hadn’t been around for awhile. For how long he had been gone, they weren’t really sure. Where he had been they were not sure, either. He had covered his tracks by not leaving any. Greg planned to keep it that way.
He had even disconnected and then reconnected his speedometer to mask how many miles he had traveled. When they checked it, they figured he had never left but had holed up in town somewhere.
89
Ranger James Stone had been locked up in his mountain cabin for months. So far, none of the FBI characters had come snooping around. As far as he knew, his whereabouts were still hidden to everyone but himself. Stone was used to living alone and keeping himself unseen.
He was an independent sort as well. His Ranger training included skills in tolerating isolated hermit-like environments including prison camps, one man cells, camping in hidden tents, and hunkering down in small woodsy cabins.
When Ranger Stone was behind enemy lines, his best bet was to lie low, light no fires, and think straight. By that, the Fort Bragg Ranger School taught him that he should always stay alert, keep his mind and body clean and pure, and to develop plans to hurt the enemy from wherever he was at the time. That was precisely Stone’s intention. He would emerge, hit them hard, then retreat back into the darkness. It was an age old skill, one practiced by nations overrun by occupying enemy forces. It was used successfully by Russia, Rome, Egypt, and Iraq over the centuries. Russia had a double crack at it when they lay back and then waited for the burning of Moscow to drive Napoleon out. They pulled the same stunt on Hitler.
Stone had changed his mind about ever attacking Washington again. Now, he planned to attack the head of the dragon inside its very lair. He wanted to humiliate and destroy America’s fake manliness. To do that, he had devised detailed plans to take out the most powerful and best known icons of Washington, DC. including the white house itself, the lair of Barack Obama, the instigator and designer of America’s killer health plans. The places he chose presented significant risk. For one thing, the buildings in and around federal square were under constant guard and were monitored twenty-four-seven. Anyone going in and out of the area was taped for later identification should something happen. High tech facial recognition systems were in place, so he’d have to find a way to get past them. He already knew how to do that. After several days of planning, he manufactured more than nineteen hundred pounds of plastic explosive for placement in just the right places to break apart entire structures.
He assembled the batteries, wiring, disposable cell phones, and other paraphernalia and tools for fast wiring of his unsuspecting and very famous targets. He also assembled suits, costumes, hair samples, and flexible facial molding materials.
Then he removed everything from the cabin that indicated anyone ever lived there, stored it underground three miles into the woods where he figured no one could ever find it, and cleaned all fingerprints from the doors, windows, and other surfaces. He swept the grounds to clean it of small pieces of evidence just as the police might do later on. In doing this, James removed all traces of his habitation that the law might be able to use against him.