He started to jump up, but Reel placed a round an inch from his right ear, so close that bits of the hard dirt kicked up and struck his ear, which started bleeding.

He screamed, “You stupid bitch, you shot me!”

“Dirt, not metal. You’d feel the difference. Now spread your legs wider.”

“What?”

“Spread your legs wider.”

“Why?”

“Do it or I promise dirt will not be the next thing you feel.”

West spread his legs wider.

Reel moved behind him and lined up her shot with her Glock.

“What the hell are you doing?” he cried out, panicked.

“Which testicle do you want to keep? But I have to tell you, at this angle, there’s no guarantee I won’t nail both of them with the one shot.”

He immediately snapped his legs together.

“Then you’ll get it right up the ass,” she said. “I don’t think it’ll feel any better.”

“Why the hell are you doing this?” he screamed.

“It’s pretty simple. I asked for a name. You didn’t give me one.”

“I didn’t officially submit it to anyone.”

“Unofficially, then,” said Reel.

“What does it matter?”

“Because it seems that some folks took you at your word and are going to try to do it.”

“Really?”

“Don’t sound so happy. It’s insane. Now the name. I won’t ask again.”

“It was only a code name,” said West.

“Bullshit.”

“I swear to God.”

“Why submit unofficially to a code name? And your answer better make sense or you’re going to need a new way to evacuate your bowels.”

“The person came to me.”

“What person?” she asked.

“I meant electronically they came to me. They somehow found out I had written a comprehensive, groundbreaking scenario. It was vindication.”

It disgusted Reel to see how animated he suddenly was in talking about his “accomplishments.”

“When did this happen?”

“About two years ago.” He added, “Are they really doing it? I mean who?”

“What was the code name?”

He didn’t answer.

“You have one second. Now!”

“Roger the Dodger,” he shouted.

“And why submit to Roger the Dodger?” she asked calmly, keeping her finger on the Glock’s trigger guard.

“His electronic signature showed he had top-top-secret clearance and was at least three levels above me. He wanted to know what I had come up with. He said the scuttlebutt was my plan was revolutionary.”

“How would he have known that if you hadn’t even submitted it to anyone yet?”

The man hesitated and said sheepishly, “Maybe I talked a bit about it at the bar we would go to for drinks after work.”

“No wonder the government kicked your ass out. You’re an idiot.”

“I would have quit anyway,” he snapped.

“Right. To come to a little cabin in the middle of this craphole.”

“This is realAmerica, bitch!”

“Your doomsday paper was pretty specific.”

He said proudly, “Country by country, leader by leader, step by step. It was all in the timing. It was a perfect jigsaw puzzle. I spent two years figuring it out. Every contingency. Everything that could go wrong. Everything was accounted for.”

“Not everything.”

“That’s impossible,” he snapped.

“You didn’t account for me.”

Reel heard the noises before he did. But when he did he smiled.

“Your time is up, little lady.”

“I’m not little. And I’ve never been a lady.”

Her boot came down on the back of his head, bouncing it off the hard dirt and knocking him out cold. She grabbed the pages and stuffed them back into her duster.

Reel retraced West’s safe path to the cabin and gave it the quick once-over. There were stacks of weapons, ammo, grenades, packs of C-4, Semtex, and other plastic explosives. Through a window looking out on the back porch she saw fifty-gallon drums of what looked to be gasoline and maybe fertilizer. She doubted they were for the generator or to grow crops. She figured the barn was probably full of those containers as well.

She also glimpsed detailed plans of attack on major cities in the United States. These folks were domestic terrorists of the worst kind. She grabbed anything that looked like it might be important, including a USB stick plugged into his laptop, and stuffed them in her coat pockets.

She also snagged a couple grenades. A “lady” could never have too many grenades.

She ran back out, raced over to his Jeep, threw open the rear door, and pulled out the scoped rifle and a box of ammo in the cargo pad.

She hustled back to her Explorer, jumped in, and peeled out. But before she got to the main road, she realized it was too late. When she saw what was coming at her, she had no option other than turning around and heading back toward the cabin.

It looked like a few precious seconds were going to end up costing Reel her life.

CHAPTER

41

REEL PUSHED THE GAS PEDAL to the floor and the Explorer roared up the twisting gravel drive. In her mind she was planning her attack. When outnumbered, retreat wasn’t always an option. Superior forces rarely expected an outgunned opponent to charge at them.

Reel wasn’t going to exactly do that. She was going for a modified version of an all-out assault.

She checked the rearview mirror and gauged the distance between her and the massive Denali chasing her. It was full of what she presumed were wackos posing as freedom fighters, and she presumed they were all heavily armed.

Well, she would find out exactly how heavily armed they were in a few seconds. And how well they handled their weapons. She just hoped the feint she was planning worked.

She gained the separation she needed, lowered the window halfway, and skidded the Ford to a stop, leaving it blocking the road. She grabbed the rifle, rested the barrel on top of the half-lowered window, took aim, and shot out the front tires on the Denali. For good measure she put a round through the front grille. Steam started to pour out and the Denali ground to a halt.

The doors opened and men jumped out gripping a variety of weapons.

Pistols and subguns did not concern her. They didn’t have the range to hurt her.

They opened fire but nothing came close to her.

She shot three times and three of the shooters fell, all with nonfatal wounds, which was intentional on her part. She just wanted them out of the action. And there was a sense of fairness as well. She didn’t have to kill them and so she let them live but in no condition to fight.

She shifted her attention to another man who jumped out on the left side of the Denali. He was holding a scoped rifle.

That could reach her. So Reel put him down with one shot to the forehead. He fell backward and the rifle spun out of his dead hands. No one went to retrieve it.

The men, probably wondering what the hell they had gotten themselves into, retreated to the back of the Denali, using the big vehicle as a shield.

But through her scope Reel could see some of them pulling cell phones out.

They were calling in reinforcements.

Ironically, that was what she wanted. It would give her the time to proceed with part two of her plan. She gunned the engine and headed toward the cabin.

A few moments later she skidded to a stop a good distance from the cabin behind a stand of trees and leapt out. She pulled the grenades from her pocket, ran toward the cabin, pulled the pins, and threw the grenades through the structure’s front window.