The Liar’s Lullaby. Meg Gardiner

you know how to fire a rocket launcher?” he said.

      “You’ll teach me.”

      That finally earned her a look from him.

      “Tasia dying wasn’t any accident. It was a government hit, no joke.” Government came out “gubmint.” “Government brought down the twin towers, Keyes—they wouldn’t think twice about killing McFarland’s first wife.”

      Keyes looked away again. He watched the police and media spectacle outside the ballpark with a cool eye. People took that look for boredom, Ivory thought, when really he was scanning the scene for threats, soft targets, weak points in the police cordon. Years of experience, it came as a reflex to him.

      “Question isn’t what the government does. It’s what we do about the government.” He turned off Lecroix’s music. “And entertainers don’t have the answer.”

      He took out his phone and went online. His face, pale and pocked, looked vivid. His anger didn’t run hot; it was reptile anger—cold and submerged and liable to erupt in ruthless bursts. Being near it made Ivory feel confident. She was in the vanguard, with a man who would be the teeth and claws of the fightback.

      She leaned close and saw him load the Tree of Liberty home page. On-screen was a message to the faithful.

      Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.—Thomas Paine

      “When did this post?” she said.

      “Ten minutes ago.”

      Tree of Liberty was the cyberdomain of True America. It was the online outpost of people like Keyes and Ivory, who saw the nightmare of government tyranny darkening the horizon. Tom Paine was their voice crying in the wilderness.

      His post began, like all his essays, with a quote from the original Thomas Paine, the American revolutionary. Then it launched.

      And so it begins.

      Today, in front of a stadium crowd, the Enemy and his legions struck down Fawn Tasia McFarland. And they murdered her in such an audacious fashion because they knew what they’d pull off: a charade.

      The circus monkeys of the mainstream media are already spinning Tasia’s death to suit Robert McFarland. It was an accident. Stunt calamity. Boo hoo.

      Bullshit. The White House killed her because of what she knew, which was plenty.

      The traitor who has seized the Oval Office is a smooth-talking jackal, but he can’t put the rumors to rest. Because, despite his lies, the truth is the truth: He was born in Cuba. Castro did finance his education. Despite the cover story concocted by the Pentagon, he called in the air strike that killed seven men in his platoon, and he did so because they were about to blow the whistle on his sexual deviancy and treason.

      Nobody was better positioned than Tasia to know Robert McFarland’s lies. She was once his consort. And she was a patriot. Read her interviews. She didn’t shrink from speaking truth to power.

      Now power has shut her up.

      Before tyrants launch a crackdown, they assassinate their most dangerous foes: the people who could expose or stop them. Tasia’s murder is like a flare fired into the sky. It’s a signal that McFarland’s troops are moving into position. Time is short.

      Robert Titus McFarland must be stopped. Who will do that? The dumb populace, grown soporific on junk food and reality TV? Never. When the government opens its internment camps, they’ll slouch through the gates without complaint, like cattle.

      Patriots must stop McFarland. And it’s pucker time, because he has us in his sights. But we refuse to shrink from the coming fight.

      His name is Legion, people. Stand up. Rip off his mask.

      Rise.

      Keyes and Ivory stared at the screen. Nobody knew who Tom Paine was. Tree of Liberty skipped around the Net, changing host sites to prevent the feds from tracing it. Paine was a specter.

      “Fuckin’ A,” Keyes said.

      Ivory drew a breath. She had chills. “We’re at ground zero. We need to send him photos.”

      Nobody had met Paine, but Keyes and Ivory volunteered as his scouts. Keyes got out of the truck and crossed the street toward the ballpark. Ivory put on a ball cap and followed.

      The cap said BLUE EAGLE SECURITY. She was clocked in for work, so she covered her hair, which she dyed as snowy as a swan’s wing. She covered her tattoos with long sleeves. And at the depot, she kept her opinions to herself. She worked in San Fran-freak-show, where whack jobs could parade bare-butt naked, chanting about diversity, but an Aryan woman had to hide her Valkyrie Sisterhood tattoos and apologize for the crime of being born white.

      Outside the ballpark, it was a scene. News trucks, reporters with microphones. And police cars lined up for a hundred yards, lights shrill, a bigfoot presence that made her skin creep.

      Keyes tapped his watch. “Sixty seconds, max.”

      They were on a late run, one of Blue Eagle’s night pickups in the city. The truck’s onboard computer automatically tracked their route. It had logged them taking a detour to the ballpark, and if they loitered there too long, their jobs would be toast.

      “Do you care?” Ivory said. “When the fightback comes, these jobs won’t matter.”

      “When the fightback comes, I want access to the truck and everything in it. So I stay on the payroll until shots are fired.”

      The Blue Eagle uniform shirt stretched across his sloping shoulders. Years in the army, Ivory thought; a decade spent working as a security contractor on behalf of the government, earning three hundred thousand dollars a year, and for what? To get fired. To end up sitting on his butt behind the wheel of a courier truck, wearing that cheap-ass shirt. The “gubmint” had reduced a warrior to a delivery boy.

      Ahead, barricades were set up. Behind them people huddled, lighting candles, laying flowers, crying. A TV crew was interviewing a Mexican woman and her little girl. The woman wiped her eyes. “Tasia grew up here—it’s like losing a member of our family. How could an accident like this happen?”

      Ivory kept her voice low. “The lie’s taking root.”

      Keyes’s face flattened, like a club. “Soon enough we’ll give her something to cry over.”

      They kept moving. Being near so many cops gave Ivory the willies. She had a record. She’d been caught patrolling the border. Illegals infested America like lice, but hunt them, take their drugs, and you got called a criminal.

      Keyes snapped photos with his phone. “Didn’t I tell you, Frisco is at the heart of the government’s plans?”

      Ivory nodded. He certainly had told her San Francisco would be a staging center during the government crackdown.

      “Killing Tasia here proves it,” he said.

      He sent his photos to Tree of Liberty. Nearby, the little Mexican girl laid a spray of white carnations by the barricade.

      “God have mercy on their souls,” Ivory said.

      “Mercy, on lice?”

      Keyes eyed her with what felt like disgust. True America, the realm of freedom and power where they lived—in their hearts—was a hard-core place.

      “Don’t hurt my feelings. I meant God better, ‘cause we won’t.”

      He should know how serious she took it. She risked everything for True America. This job, her whole life in San Francisco, was a front. And if the cops found out, she’d take a hard fall.

      Then Keyes put a hand on her shoulder. “The rocket launcher rests right here. I’ll teach you.”

      She lifted her chin, thrilled. Around them, gawkers and weepers continued to gather. Cops