Molon Labe! (28 page)

"Where did you get this thing?"

"It was a .pdf file emailed from a remailer. No leads on its origin."

The Director sighs. "Well, keep on it. Try to get to the next level and be invited to move to Bear Dropping, Wyoming."

[T]
he tax-gatherer is the very man I have to deal with — for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel — and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government.

— Thoreau,
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
(1849)

After the first death, there is no other.

— Dylan Thomas

Montgomery County, Maryland

February 2009

The dawn air was frigid, and a sheet of thin ice covered the wealthy suburban neighborhood. Very little was stirring but the paperboy on his moped and a few early commuters groggily leaving their homes to get a jump on the morning Beltway traffic.

Precisely at 5:45AM Jonathan Douglas Gray stepped onto the porch of his two-story Tudor, locked the front door behind him, and eased into a loping jog towards the park six blocks away. His morning runs were always 45 minutes. It's how he remained in such good physical condition into his late-50s even after a lifetime of government service.

He looked back on his career as a federal district court judge with great pride. Congressional laws deserve to be upheld, and vigorously so. The magnificent system of federalism was not as ambiguous as those "states rights" whiners claimed. Through the constitutional clauses of
"interstate and foreign commerce"
and
"necessary and proper"
and
"supreme law of the land"
the Congress and the President have the power to set public policy. This necessarily touched on many areas of common life thought by libertarians to be sacrosanct — not so! While on the bench, Judge Gray eagerly gave the harshest punishments to those who would dare violate federal laws controlling guns, drugs, education, and small business.

Some defendants in court actually floated arguments that the Constitution protected some "right" to own assault weapons, or use marijuana for allegedly "medical" purposes. The very idea! As if that venerable document were written so millions of Americans could shoot up with heroin and then fire machineguns into schoolyards! To operate unlicensed and unregulated companies. To have children off the tax roles — birthed by black market midwives, no less! — and then evade public education through the sham of "home-schooling." To willfully circumvent the National ID Card, a device vital for corralling terrorists, shadow criminals, money launderers, and tax cheats.

No, that was
anarchy.
Judge Gray was well served by a single, overriding premise: What is not in control is
out
of control. Yes, America is a free country, but freedom is not unlimited. We enjoy our liberties
because
of laws — every one of them part of the vast bulwark against anarchy.

To Judge Gray there were no bad laws, only underappreciated ones.

He upheld them all. If he did not, who
would
? Laws were conceived and passed for good reason by professional legislators elected to office by a citizenry generally incapable of running their own lives. Gray understood that people are unfit for self-rule. They always have been, and always will be. Gray also understood that a small, select class of men were born to wisely rule. Such had always been the case. One never has to ask if one is among the ruling class any more than a fish ever questions its innate ability to swim. People are who they
should
be.

Jonathan Douglas Gray had been a federal judge and faithful protector of the law because it was his particular fate. The thousands of criminals who yearly clogged his beautiful court with the stink of their insolence were also playing out their part. Gray realized long ago that a man of his position must cultivate a garden of calm perspective: without the great unwashed there could be no laws, no court, no judgeship.

Rulers needed subjects just as subjects needed rulers.

Still, the notion often rankled. When it did, Gray "threw the book" at the latest would-be anarchist. Asymmetrical punishment, he called it. An eye for a tooth. The Government could not afford to appear weak, not for a second. Yes, stern measures were best. One had to shock
das
Volk
with regular harsh sentences in order to keep them in line.

One also had to rule one's body to keep
it
in line. Gray's flesh was always pleading for a "day off" from its morning jogs. He never gave in. His body was subject to his iron will every minute of every day. Being called a "Health Nazi" by the
lumpenproletariat
was a jealous compliment.

Gray would return home at 6:30, take a cold shower of distilled water, rub himself down with coconut oil, and eat a light breakfast of organic bran, yogurt, and precisely measured Brewer's yeast. He would leave for his law firm at 7:15. Regularity of schedule had served him well.

Until today.

He reaches the park a few minutes later. On the familiar jogging path he feels his muscles warm and loosen up, his stride relaxing. His exhalations are bursts of steam, as if from a mighty train. The image always invigorates him. Powerful. In control. Exercising while sluggards slept.

The morning is silent but for his rhythmic breathing and crunchy footfalls on the frozen gravel trail. His normal route through the park is a figure-eight, with the middle deep inside the woods and the top and bottom ends near the streets. As he nears the top of the park he notices the gray-blue dawning light through the thinning trees.

Gray sees another jogger up ahead on the left. Tall and muscular, with blonde hair under his knit watch cap. Gray instantly seethes inside. Few people ran in "his" park this early and it always irked him when they did. Especially if they were in good shape. He overtakes the jogger in a blue sweatsuit and passes by on the right without even condescending to look at him.

The tall jogger slightly picks up his pace, keeping one step behind. He raises his right arm, its hand grasping a leather sap filled with 16 ounces of fine lead shot. Gray feels a sense of vague alarm and begins to turn his head, but the jogger is too quick for him. He smashes the sap on the back of Gray's head, causing his brain's frontal lobe to bounce off the inside of his forehead. He is unconscious before he even hits the ground in a sprawl. He will not wake up for hours, and when he does he will not recall being struck.

As he bags the sap in a ZipLoc and pockets it, the jogger forces his breathing to slow as he intently scans the park.
Alone.
He then hoists the 165 pound Gray as if a bag of dogfood and trudges the twenty yards up a knoll to the treeline by the street. He puts Gray down behind some shrubbery, takes out a pair of compact Steiner 8x22 binoculars from underneath his sweatshirt and carefully surveys the street.
Be thorough. Don't be in a hurry to move
.

The neighborhood is still sleepy and quiet.

His parked car is just thirty feet away, beckoning as his escape. He had carefully chosen something fitting for the area — a white, late 1990s Lincoln. He picked white because it was the most common color. Nearly 60% of rental cars were white. It also had a large trunk. A van, although roomier, was subjected to much more police scrutiny.

A Lincoln would raise no attention and was instantly forgettable.

The preparation of the car had been paramount. The registration must be valid in case he were stopped, but not linkable to him. He bought it with cash from a private owner last week. The title had not been transferred, but he signed a bill of sale made out to a fictitious company. He even printed up business cards to show any officer during a traffic stop. Once this mission was completed, he would simply resell the Lincoln on the previous owner's title (being careful not to leave fingerprints on it), never having registered it him-self. No paper or financial records tied him to the car, and he had disguised himself to thwart recognition by the seller. He could even dump the car.

The only thing more untraceable would have been to use a stolen car, but the risks were too great. One random license check would catch him. Interim ownership was best.

He had left the trunk just slightly open so he doesn't have to use a key.
This is my moment of greatest risk
the man reminds himself. From shrubbery to trunk is only thirty feet and five seconds, but they are the most important five seconds of his life. The quality of his future depends upon nobody driving around the corner, or leaving their house, or looking out their front window during that brief time. He could explain being discovered next to the downed jogger, but there was simply no plausible explanation for putting an unconscious man in a car trunk.

A thought flashes through his mind.
Still time to quit and just walk away. I can snap the bastard's neck and leave him here. Easy!
He rejects the craven idea.
No, that's the chickenshit way out, and it's too good for Gray! Stick with the plan!
He will go through with it.

The man is on fire with acuity, too excited to be nervous. He scans the neighborhood one last time. Nobody is stirring. The longer he waits, the riskier it becomes.
Time to just go for it!
He picks up Gray and walks briskly, but smoothly, to the rear of the white Lincoln, lifts the lid and gently places him inside. He forces himself not to look around, which would look suspicious if somebody were watching him.

The trunk is completely and carefully lined with 6mil heavy plastic, taped securely around all edges. On top of that is a second sheet of the same plastic to prevent any transfer of hair or fiber residue Gray to trunk, or vice versa. The spare tire and jack had been moved to the rear floorboard so that he does not have to open the trunk in the event of a flat.

He needs to bind up Gray so that he cannot free himself or pound on the trunk lid to attract attention. He has an overwhelming desire to drive away
now
, to leave the area immediately, but he knows that's just panic talking.
Stick with the plan!
He quickly covers Gray's head with a cotton hood and then cable-ties his feet and hands together. He had considered using tape but tape picks up
lots
of tell-tale debris. Modern crime labs can even lift prints from the adhesive side with dye staining or lasers.

He bags his Microflex Diamond Grip latex gloves and tosses them inside with the sap. Then he covers the jogger with the second plastic sheet and closes the trunk lid.

The electric latch sound is immensely reassuring.
I am 80% homefree
.

He takes one last casual look around the neighborhood. Still alone. He gets in the car, carefully placing his size 12 running shoes in a plastic bag on the floorboard. He bought them for a dollar at a garage sale months prior in another state. Although he is a size 10, he wanted larger mission shoes in order to leave contradictory evidence. With two extra pairs of heavy socks, they fit fine. His shaved calves and feet left no hairs in the shoes.

He bags his $1.00 bargain footwear and slips on another used pair —size 10 — unsoiled from his jog. Nothing from the Lincoln is in the park, and nothing from the park is in the Lincoln.

Nothing besides Jonathan Douglas Gray, that is.

He then dumps out two lipstick-stained cigarette butts he found in a mall ashtray. The man neither smoked nor wore lipstick, but these two false clues may cause the FBI to search for a woman driver. Having been a cop after Desert Storm while he got his Chemical Engineering B.S. on the GI Bill, the man knew police work. He understood that investigators' time was, like anybody else's, finite, and the more time you caused them to waste, the better your chances of success. Forensic crime labs with DNA analysis could identify subjects from their saliva left in payphone mouthpieces, but the finer the tool the easier it is to blunt its edge. A bag full of cigarette butts, hair clippings, used tissues, and the like dumped at a crime scene will overwhelm any forensic lab, including the FBI's. A powerful floodlight negates $4,000 night vision devices. And so on.

Technology only has advantages when kept on its own terms. Where it magnifies, give it a boxcar load. The FBI cannot keep up with its Carnivore DCS1000 analysis of email traffic any more than the Treasury Department can filter through the millions of annual Currency Transaction Reports. Like finding a needle in a needlestack.

It was all about the signal-to-noise ratio.

The man smiles at his reflection on all this as he inserts the ignition key. The Lincoln starts immediately, fully warmed up by the 150 mile trip to the park. He had arrived precisely at 5:30AM so it hadn't cooled down. He leisurely drives towards the highway. Removing his watch cap and blonde wig, and bagging them both, he is glad to see his short, brown hair again in the mirror. A few miles later he pulls next to a trashcan, tosses in his bagged shoes, cap, wig, and drives on.

I am 85% homefree
.

Several minutes later he is on I-270 South heading towards D.C. He checks his rearview mirror for a break in traffic behind him, and when he sees one he flips a toggle switch on the console. A rectangular piece of metal falls from behind his car and skitters to the shoulder.
Worked perfectly!
He had installed a powerful electromagnet behind his car's license plate and bracket. An hour earlier he stuck on an old, expired steel license plate (which he found at a flea market) over his own. It was his homage to "Q" and James Bond.

I am 90% homefree
.

The most dangerous part has passed. Now, he must play the part of a commuter who has a perfectly good reason to be where he was at six in the morning, along with a mundane, believable, and verifiable destination. He obeys all traffic laws and drives at 2mph under the speed limits. He has a mug of steaming coffee fresh brewed from a 12VDC machine. Hanging in the back is a business suit.