LITMIR.BIZ

      1

      McLean, Virginia

      Edgar Byrnes’s breath clouded in the chilled March air as he brushed snow off the woodpile and gathered a few logs for his evening fire. It was dusk. The moon was out, a thin, waxing sliver poised like a scythe above the dark storm clouds rolling in from the Atlantic. A faint breeze stirred through the forest of elms and sycamores surrounding the four-acre farm Byrnes called home. Leaves were budding on the trees despite the late frost, but through the branches Byrnes was still able to glimpse the outline of a monolithic building located a quarter mile away on the other side of the woods. It was the only visible trace of modern civilization, and in another week or two Byrnes knew the trees would fill in, obscuring the structure from view entirely.

      We can’t wait much longer, Byrnes thought to himself as he carried the logs past a weathered lean-to shared by three cows, two horses and menagerie of pigs, chickens and sheep. One of the horses, a sturdy roan with a jet-black mane and tail, was out in the corral, snorting as it paced back and forth through the mud.

      “Sorry, Jefferson,” Byrnes called out. “Too cold to go riding tonight.”

      Once he reached his small one-room cabin, Byrnes freed one hand to let himself in, then kicked the door shut behind him. Last month, shortly after he’d been hired to work the farm, his first job had been to patch cracks in the mortar between the hand-hewn logs that formed the cabin’s four walls. He’d done a good job but such crude insulation could only keep out so much of the cold; inside it was still freezing.

      After setting the logs onto a bed of kindling in the large stone fireplace, Byrnes blew on his hands and rubbed them over the lone flame of an oil lamp he’d left burning on a nearby table. Once the feeling came back to his fingers, he plucked a few hay straws off the dirt floor and used the lamp to light them, then crouched before the stacked wood. The straws’ flames crackled as they took hold of the kindling and began to spread. Soon the logs had caught fire as well, sending smoke up the chimney.

      Byrnes pulled a wooden rocker close to the hearth and sat down. His workday, which had begun nearly twelve hours ago at the crack of dawn, was finally over. He smiled tiredly, filled with a sense of accomplishment.

      It would soon be a full eight weeks that Byrnes, a thirty-two-year-old Gulf War veteran, had been working at the Michael Conlon Farm, a state-owned Colonial homestead painstakingly maintained to reflect what ordinary farm life had been like back in the days of the country’s founding fathers. For Byrnes the experience had been a joyful revelation, so much so that there had been times when, for days on end, he had forgotten the true reason he’d come to work here. He’d learned so much in that time: how to make soap from tallow; how to tan animal hides and use the leather to make shoes and clothes; how to spin wool from sheep; the best way to fetch water from nearby streams and boil it with fresh vegetables from the garden to make a nourishing stew.

      The past few weeks in particular, when he’d come to be the sole caretaker living on the premises, had been like heaven. Having the place to himself most days, he exulted in the solitude and isolation, the sense that he had indeed been transported back to a time when America was the home of those who were self-reliant and bound by high ideals—a time before values had eroded in the face of complacency and the government had grown into what Byrnes felt was a festering cancer eating away at the foundation upon which the nation had been built.

      Staring into the fire, stroking the thick brown beard he’d grown to cover chemical burns sustained during his time in the Gulf, Byrnes found himself wondering, as he had so many nights before, what it had to have been like to have been a part of that simpler and nobler past. Of one thing he was certain: back then the men who’d put their lives on the line to fight the Revolution had been treated as heroes and looked after once the war had been won. Nothing like today. No being shuttled through some uncaring bureaucratic maze; no denial of hard-earned benefits; no shameless attempts to dismiss claims of illness stemming from exposure to carcinogens and other toxins while in the line of duty. And all those years ago, Byrnes knew there had been no insidious attempts to silence those who might dare to band together to give their grievances a stronger voice. Back then, the notion of a citizens’ militia had been applauded and championed, not spit upon by self-serving federal agents and the brainwashed masses.

      Byrnes felt he’d been born in the wrong century. And the penalty for his bad luck? Instead of being honored as a returned warrior, he saw himself viewed as a pariah. An outcast and fringe lunatic. Little wonder it had taken the isolation of the farm for him to find even the faintest glimmer of inner peace. And he knew that peace was as illusory as it was temporary. Soon he would be called upon to carry out his mission, and when that happened, all his memories of the past months would be just that: memories. The realization darkened Byrnes’s mood as surely as nightfall had begun to press its inky blackness on the cabin windows. Byrnes could feel himself tensing in the chair as his rage, like some roused beast, began to once again overtake him.

      By now the fire in the hearth was blazing. Agitated, Byrnes began to fumble with the buttons of his coat. The buttons were made of bone, and it was no easy task to work them through the hand-sewn loops. He was struggling with the task when an overheated strip of bark was launched out of the fire at him. Startled, Byrnes let out a cry and recoiled, overturning the rocker in his haste to throw himself to the dirt floor. Panic seized him as he crawled away from the fire and curled into a fetal position, clutching his head protectively. Sweat beaded his face and his heart convulsed inside his chest. He was overwhelmed by a mad rush of flashbacks taking him back to the hell that had been Khamisiyah. The rattle of gunfire, the stench of diesel, men howling in pain, the splash of something hot as molten lava against his face—the sensory overload was as intense as it was sudden. Within seconds the beleaguered veteran gave in to the recurring nightmare and blacked out.

      Moments later he came to, cold earth pressing against his bearded face. The ember that had triggered his blackout lay a few inches away, still glowing faintly. Byrnes watched the ember burn itself out with cold detachment, waiting for his mind to clear and for his pulse to return to normal. Finally he was able to struggle to his feet and right the toppled rocker. He sat back down again, drained, trembling, eyes trained on the fire. A racked sob shook through him. He clenched his fingers around the arms of the chair, determined not to give in to his sorrow and feeling of helplessness.

      “No more,” he murmured aloud, his voice hoarse. “No more.”

      For the next hour, Byrnes remained in the chair, rocking gently, transfixed by the fire, watching it slowly burn itself out. The lamp on the table beside him went out as well, and as the cabin grew dark, several more embers snapped out onto the floor.

      Finally, as the last few flames licked at what remained of the charred logs in the fireplace, the evening chill crept back into the darkened cabin. Even colder and darker now, however, was the expression in Byrnes’s eyes. He had the look of a man at the end of his tether, a man who’d reached a point where he saw but one course of action and was steeling himself for the demands that course would entail. Byrnes was through waiting for the call from his superiors. He’d decided it was time to take matters into his own hands, to renounce his inner demons and seize control of his own fate.

      Rising from the chair, the veteran relit the oil lamp, then crossed the room and stood on a small wooden bench set in the corner. He reached up and gently worked free two loose boards straddling the rafters that made up the cabin’s ceiling. There was a small cavity between the slats and the roof. Byrnes used the space to store several of his concessions to modern-day technology. He made frequent use of his cell phone and notebook computer, but this night it was a third item—which he’d been given just two days earlier—that commanded his attention. He reached deep into the cavity and

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