LITMIR.BIZ

      “Covey claimed later that he was referring to twelve-year-old scotch.”

      5

      Travis Bodine felt like hearing the word of the gospel on this fine Sunday morning. And although it would never occur to him to actually attend church services, a God-fearing man knew that good Sunday morning preaching was never farther away than his old radio.

      Travis slowly and carefully got up from his workbench and walked over to the shelf that held his autographed copies of The Anarchist Cookbook and The Poor Man’s James Bond. He pushed the books aside and turned on the radio. It crackled and popped, and then there was lots of static. Travis leaned in, trying to hear the voice coming through.

      “Democrat Clinton Kendall and Republican challenger Pete Moreno are now in a neck-and-neck race to be New Jersey’s next senator. Polls show the candidates in a dead heat with each getting forty-nine percent of the vote…. In other news, the annual New Jersey bear hunt is stirring up controversy again….”

      “Shit,” Travis said angrily, backing away from the radio’s corrupted speaker. He didn’t give a damn about the bears or the election. He knew there was no end to the corruption in New Jersey politics, so he didn’t give a damn who won the Senate race. It didn’t matter. As far as he was concerned, Kendall and Moreno were both crooks.

      Disgusted, Travis whacked the radio a few times, then fiddled with the dial until he heard the familiar voice of Brother Claude Dougherty. Travis smiled. He loved Brother Dougherty.

      Dougherty ran his church services like a rock show. Sometimes Travis had seen Brother Dougherty, or “BD” as his congregation called him, on television. There were colored strobe lights flashing and electric guitar solos punctuating the hymns.

      Travis could picture it now. Dougherty was a master showman.

      He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. He knocked one out, clamped it between his lips, then fired it up, fervently inhaling the smoke along with Brother Dougherty’s fiery sermon.

      “The world is full of latter-day sinners, my dear friends in Christ. Fornicators! Adulterers! Sodomites! We are on a one-way trip to eternal damnation, brothers and sisters. It is time for the righteous among us to stand up. Stand up and make a blood atonement! Stand up and choose salvation! It is our time. It is time to do the Lord’s work. The Lord cares more for one righteous man than for one million of the ungodly! Can I preach it like I feel it?

      “Yes, Brother Claude, preach it!!

      “I know the elections are near, my friends, and politics will force you to choose one side or the other. But on this Sunday, before we exercise our right, I will not stand here and endorse either candidate, but remember, before you are a Democrat or a Republican, you are a Christ-o-crat, or a member of the G.O.P.—God’s Only Party. You are not going to get into heaven. You have to be a righteous man first. Can I get an Amen?”

      “Amen to that, Brother Claude,” Travis said softly as he walked back to his workbench.

      Travis Bodine was one righteous man. He had done time in a federal penitentiary for not paying his income taxes and for beating the crap out of the IRS agent who discovered that he hadn’t.

      When Travis was released, he found religion. He cleansed his soul. The next thing he did was learn everything he could about explosives and weapons.

      Travis took to these skills easily, as if his talents were God-given. He swore on God’s holy name to kill anyone who ever tried to make him pay taxes again.

      Apparently, the anger-management classes he had been forced to take as a condition of his probation hadn’t sunk in. He still preferred to handle his anger in his own unique and combustible way.

      Travis knew that God was angry, too. There was evidence of His fury everywhere. That’s why He sent wars, suicide bombers, tsunamis, and hurricanes. Travis blamed the U.S. government for allowing the sinners to flourish under its protection.

      “…Here in this sanctified place, and to those of you out there watching and listening to our broadcast, let us confess our sins so that we may obtain forgiveness by His infinite goodness and mercy. Let us kneel with penitent hearts and confess our sins. Let us hold on to His hand. Let us pray that He rids us of abortionists! That He rids us of homosexuals! That He rids us of parlors of death and dens of flesh and debasement!”

      “And taxes!” Travis yelled to Brother Claude. “Don’t forget the taxes. May He rid us of taxes!”

      Travis’s government had failed him. That’s why God sent him to get revenge.

      So far, he had taken God’s revenge to two post offices and a federal construction site. Travis didn’t know why God had sent the tsunami, didn’t know what the people of Phi Phi Island had done to incur his wrath, but the place was filled with little brown-skinned people, so they must have been up to something.

      Looking into the briefcase on his workbench, Travis made a final inspection of the C-4 plastic explosive inside it. He cut along the seams of a lead-lined photography bag used to protect newly shot film and fashioned it to fit over the mechanics of the wiring and detonator to avoid detection. Then he closed the false bottom and filled the rest of the briefcase with paper clips, pushpins, pencils, pens, a calculator, and other objects one would ordinarily find in a briefcase. He added as much as he could. It was all good for shrapnel after the bomb exploded.

      Travis could have easily used a car or truck bomb parked in the bottom of the federal building, but he loved getting up close. Loved getting in the government’s face. The briefcase bombs were perfect for him. His weapon of choice. His signature sedition.

      Sitting back, he mentally played out his next moves. The timing had to be perfect. He would take the bomb to the IRS building in Newark. The briefcase

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