America Rising Read online

  America Rising

  By Tom Paine

  Copyright Tom Paine © 2012

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Angelica Soderlund

  For more about Tom Paine and America Rising, go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/America-Rising-The-Novel/134337723279375

  For Suzanne, who is everything

  and makes everything possible

  Contents

  Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26 | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 | Chapter 29 | Chapter 30 | Chapter 31 | Chapter 32 | Chapter 33 | Chapter 34 | Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40 | Chapter 41 | Chapter 42

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Chapter 1

  The morning sun rose grudgingly over Radabob Key, a dull orange bruise against a chilly, gray sky.

  I sat in the bow of an 18-foot Dauntless as it slid along the twisting passageway that wound through stands of spiky mangroves from Largo Sound to the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. The hull slapped rhythmically against the choppy water, misting me with an icy spray that numbed my face and hands. In my lap was a small wooden box that held the last ten years of my life—the ashes of my wife, Carolyn, dead only days from the cancer she’d battled for the past three years. It was a rare form of blood cancer—horrible, awful, terrifying—but manageable if treated properly.

  It wasn’t.

  Carolyn’s insurance company had had some “financial challenges,” I knew from reading reports in the newspaper I used to work for. Quarterly profits were down, executive bonuses at stake. So to crack down on “fraud,” they scoured the applications of clients with the temerity to get sick, looking for an “i” not dotted, a “t” not crossed, any minor error or omission, any reason at all to avoid paying. They called it “rescission.”

  I call it murder.

  Of course, the company found what it was looking for, a couple months of acne medication taken as a teenager that had long ago slipped my wife’s memory. That was all it took. A legal-sounding letter informed us that Carolyn’s policy had been cancelled, her treatment denied. We were on our own.

  Just thinking about it made a red cloud boil up in my eyes. I tightened my grip on the box as Robert called out from the boat’s console, “You alright over there, Josh?”

  As alright as I was going to be.

  “I’m okay, Robert.”

  “We’ll be at the reef in about fifteen minutes. We can drop anchor any place you like.”

  I nodded back, not trusting myself to speak. This would be the last time I touched my wife, scattering her ashes over the water we’d grown to love. We cleared the channel buoy at the mouth of the passageway and the 135-horsepower Mercury whined louder and more insistently, tilting the bow up as we quickly gained speed. The icy mist was a pinprick spray now but I barely felt its chill.

  Despite everything, we had never given up.

  After the denial we burned through our savings, maxed out our credit cards and, when that was done, borrowed from friends and relatives, cajoling, pleading, bullying doctors and hospitals for the drugs and care she needed. Carolyn fought with a ferocious courage that shamed my own resolve. I fought back my own way, filing a lawsuit—Henson v. United Medical—drawing on my contacts and knowledge of how to play the media game gained from twenty years in the news biz. It was almost enough, but a year and $150,000 later, we were out of money. Too broke to afford treatment, too rich for Medicaid, we had precious few options.

  Finally, after six months of watching my wife slowly give back all the ground she’d gained on her adversary, I succeeded in my PR gambit, making “rescission” and Carolyn’s case the focus of a slew of stories in print, on television and the ‘Net, culminating in a brief mention on one of those network morning shows I’d spent years deriding.

  That did it. The negative publicity, the threat of legal action by the attorneys general of several states, the fear of having to explain their decision to the jury of a dying woman’s peers caused the company to cave. They reinstituted Carolyn’s coverage, reimbursed us for her expenses and threw in a few more—actually a lot more—dollars to make us go away.

  We took the money and ran, moving to the Florida Keys and buying a house on the water in Key Largo. Carolyn was sick and getting sicker but was adamant we spend what time she had left in the kind of tropical paradise we’d both dreamed of. There wasn’t much. In six months she was bedridden. In a week, she was gone.

  An abrupt drop in the boat’s speed and the outboard’s return to a low-pitched growl brought me back to the present.

  “Anywhere you like, Josh,” Robert called from the console.

  The vast, unknowable expanse of gray-blue water seemed to want to reach up and swallow me whole. For a moment I thought of following Carolyn in, letting the cold and current take me. But the moment passed.

  “This is fine, Robert,” I said. “Just let her drift.”

  I sensed rather than saw my friend duck down behind the console to give me some privacy. I took the box in my lap and raised it to my lips.

  “Goodbye, Linnie,” I whispered, carefully removing the box’s top and tilting the silver dust into the water. It floated on the surface for a second, glittering like powdered crystal, then the waves carried it away. I imagined I could see the tiny particles carried outwards, infusing new life to the ocean from what had been taken from mine. After a time I felt Robert’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I said, still watching the water. He squeezed gently, turned the boat around and took me back to the rest of my life.

  * * *

  “Godammit, Moosh! Where’s the fucking car?”

  Moises Ben Levi hid a thin smile and ignored the question. The former Israeli paratrooper was used to swallowing his employer’s digs and minor slights, like the deliberate mispronouncing of his given name, but a seven-figure salary and the chance to retire before he hit fifty made them go down easier. Besides, this was a vacation compared to what he’d seen on the West Bank and Gaza. It was just part of dealing with Ed Bane, being poked and prodded and reminded a dozen times a day exactly who was the boss.

  When it came to the kind of political punditry that intimidated politicians, terrified bureaucrats and could generate millions of angry emails on whatever subject engaged his tonsils, Edwin MacArthur Bane, Jr. was indeed the boss. A former vacuum cleaner salesman and talk jock on a one-lung Illinois radio station, he’d worked his way up through the media minor leagues, honing his act and biding his time until his show exploded and he grabbed the throne once held by the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

  Combining the weepy apocalypticism of the former with the carefully calibrated bombast of the latter, Ed Bane developed a pair of nationwide radio and television broadcasts that didn’t so much dominate the airwaves as grasp them by the throat and strangle them. Every day more than twenty million listeners and viewers tuned in to hear him announce, “Liberals, Democraps, socialists, losers, I am Ed Bane. The bane of your existence.”

  Standing in the foyer of his sprawling, Addison Mizner-designed Palm Beach mansion, Bane tapped his foot impatiently until twin Maybach limousines emerged from the garage at the back of the estate and parked beneath a portico large enough to shelter a baseball diamond. The limos rolled up and Ben Levi held open the massive Macassar Ebony front door for Bane and girlfriend Olivia de Silva, eyeing her backside appreciatively as she passed. De Silva was a stunner, no question—athlete’s toned body, model’s high cheekbones, plastic surgeon’s swollen breasts. She was dressed in a hand-tailored pantsuit of iridescent silk that rippled in the breeze of a balmy South Florida evening.

  Bane himself was rather more doughy, thanks mainly to a diet rich in Kobe beef and expensive Napa Valley Cabernet. From his neatly manicured nails to his impeccably cut and styled dark hair to cheeks so smoothly shaven they appeared to have been waxed, everything about him spoke of the soothing balm of obscene amounts of money. He capped off the look by dressing in full Palm Beach regalia—white slacks, red-and-white striped Brooks Brothers shirt, royal blue Berluti loafers, pink Ralph Lauren sweater draped over his shoulders. Moises Ben Levi hid another smile. They looked ridiculous, and the cost of their outfits could have fed a family of four for a month.

  Two beefy men dressed in identical black suits jumped out of the lead Maybach and stood at attention beside the vehicle. Bane stopped in the doorway and gave exasperated.

  “Who are these two, Moosh?” he asked, looking through the men as if they were made of glass. “You put two more goons on the payroll?” When’s it going to stop?”

  “I told you last week,” Ben Levi said patiently, maintaining his even tone by imagining grabbing Bane by his fruity-looking sweater and slapping the living shit out of him. “I’m not comfortable with some of the things I’ve been hearing. Nothing definite, but there’s a threat. And it’s real. If I’m to keep you and Ms. de Silva safe, I need manpower. Besides, these men are not goons; they’re ex-Special Forces who can kill a man more ways than you can split an infi
nitive. I’m your head of security, remember? If you don’t like the job I’m doing. . .”

  Ed Bane grinned and waved his hand dismissively. This was all part of their daily dance. “You do your job well, Moosh. I know that. Now can we get the fuck out of here? I’m starving.”

  Moises Ben Levi hadn’t bothered to explain the reasons why even a five-minute ride to a local restaurant on a quiet Saturday evening required two vehicles, two two-man teams and himself. But those things he’d heard through the intelligence grapevine made him subconsciously pat the Glock he kept in a shoulder holster under his off-the-rack suit jacket.

  The U.S. senator who was the biggest booster of another bloated, over-budget Pentagon weapons project hadn’t been quarantined with a virulently contagious infection as reported but in fact had been missing, incommunicado, for more than a week. When he was found by police not far from Capitol Hill, he shrank from the patrolman’s touch and refused to talk to authorities, even his wife. Instead, he resigned his Senate seat, flew back to California and checked himself into a hospital, reportedly for “exhaustion.” The weapons project was ultimately terminated.

  The Connecticut mansion of the CEO of one of the country’s largest and most profitable hedge funds had recently been broken into in a daring midnight raid. In minutes the invaders had disabled a state-of-the-art alarm system, disarmed and rendered unconscious a trio of security guards, then melted away. The only clue they left was a plain white business card printed with a single word in big black letters. Moises Ben Levi knew the man who ran the CEO’s security detail. He was very professional, very good. Whoever made him look like an incompetent amateur was better.

  The two black-suited newbies stood stiffly until Bane and de Silva and Ben Levi climbed into the second Maybach, then jumped back into the lead car and rolled down the long driveway, past the locked and guarded gate, the thick hedge of manicured ficus that rose twenty feet into the air and out onto the street. Even though the route was less than two miles through one of the richest and most exclusive communities in the country, Ben Levi had checked it out as if it were in downtown Baghdad. He knew that Bane had bought out the restaurant—a mediocre “Tuscan” joint that would have been laughed out of Italy—for the evening, paying the entire staff to stay home except for the chef, a favored waiter and the oily, obsequious owner. If Bane left happy, each would go home with a five thousand dollar tip. Since he’d had recently inked a lifetime deal estimated to be worth close to one billion dollars, five grand was pin money.

  Ben Levi turned in his seat and addressed his boss.

  “This is how we do it, now and every time after. Two cars, always. Your car will change position at random: back to front, front to back. When we get to the restaurant, we will park directly in front of the entrance and hold there. Michael here”—he indicated the driver—”and I will escort you and Ms. de Silva in. Antwan will park the other car across the street and watch the building, John will take the restaurant’s rear door. I’ll be at the bar, watching the front. When you’re finished dinner, we do it again. But we take a different route home. Anything happens, even smells like it might happen, I give the word and you get down on the floor. You don’t get up until I say. Got that?”

  Olivia de Silva opened her mouth to launch one of her trademark whines but something in Ben Levi’s eyes made her reconsider; instead, she fluffed her hair and flopped back in the seat. Men. Ed Bane grinned. “Got it, Moosh,” he said. He looked like he was enjoying the attention. Moises Ben Levi frowned and thought of the hacienda and thirty acres of land he owned in Costa Rica.

  * * *

  Eldrick Brown padded out of the studio and back to his desk in the “cube farm” of KKLI “Talk-Back Radio.” It was a few minutes after five in the morning and he was tired and ready to go home; he’d been on the air since one, the slot he’d held for the past twenty years. Back then it was just a sop thrown by station management to the black community of the San Francisco Bay Area, but Eldrick Brown made news and got ratings with his defiantly left-wing views, uncanny feel for his audience and mouth that could cut like a scalpel or hack like a meat cleaver.

  He took the elevator down to the station lobby and had the relentlessly cheerful security guard at the desk buzz him through to the underground parking garage. Even though four hours of live radio left him drained and weary, he was looking forward to the drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to his Marin County home in his new Jaguar. As he approached the car he heard steps, then a rough voice. “Hey, nigger!”

  Eldrick Brown hadn’t heard that word spoken with bad intent in more than twenty years. He stopped and cocked his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it. He couldn’t believe it was happening here. The KKLI garage was guarded, secure, open only to station employees. None of them would be crazy or racist enough to openly slur one of the station’s stars, especially one with his clout and stature. He balled his fists and turned to face the voice; Eldrick Brown never backed down from a fight, either on the air or in the street.

  He didn’t have a chance. In an instant, a fist as hard and heavy as a lead weight landed on the side of his face. He could hear his cheekbone crack, feel his mouth fill with blood. Other fists connected with his ear, his kidneys, his groin. But he was already falling to the pavement, losing consciousness. He never felt the boot that broke off a piece of a rib and drove it straight through his heart.

  Chapter 2

  Early Monday morning the phone rang in my cluttered home office.

  “Josh, it’s Chloe.” I knew that tone of voice well—tired and wired, a combination known to any reporter who’d pulled an all-nighter chasing down a breaking story.

  “Jesus, Chloe, it’s four-thirty in San Francisco. You sure are burning the candle.”

  Chloe Enders was one of my best friends in the news business. We met in the Mission District covering a triple homicide, me for the San Francisco Trib, she for a local TV station. Despite the usual print-broadcast rivalry, we liked each other immediately, and when we were both laid off by our respective employers, we banded together with a couple dozen other turned-loose scribes in several big cities to start Public Interest, a nonprofit investigative journalism service—a sort of Huffington Post with fangs—that dug up the dirt that most print, broadcast and online outlets had neither the funds nor desire to uncover. We sometimes partnered with other media, and posted on our own website too, embarrassing more than a couple of major news outfits by exposing scandals in their own back yards. If Chloe Enders was at her desk before the sun came up, the excrement was about to hit the forced-air induction system.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Josh. But I’ve got bad news.”

  Great. I already felt like flypaper to bad news.

  “Eldrick Brown is dead.”

  “Ahhh, shit, Chloe.”

  I knew Eldrick well and I liked him a lot. I’d first met him at a divey Mission District bar favored by media types, and though our schedules were typically crazy, we made it a point to get together for drinks, gossip and general bitching at least a couple of times a month. He was a good friend when Caroline was sick, and after we moved to the Keys he kept in touch via email and the occasional phone call. Eldrick Brown was smart, tough and fearless. The media universe was a lesser place without him.