American Subversive (12 page)

Old
National Geographic
s if anyone wants them, he said, pointing at a stack of discolored magazines. He disappeared behind an overturned canoe.

What a fucking mess, Lindsay said, backing out.

Yes, but the walls, came Keith's voice, from within. Look how thick they are.

Someone else had seen how thick the walls were. Someone else had been here before us, scouting out prospects, dreaming of possibilities, and this sad house, this sleepy valley, had been chosen over dozens of other houses and valleys across New England. But these were things left unspoken—names I couldn't know, faces I shouldn't see. Uncertainty was part of the program.

And what a well-oiled program it was. Our first week up North fell quickly into place. Lindsay found a job in town while Keith and I busied ourselves at the house. We embedded the dedicated Wi-Fi with digital inhibitors and mounted a counterbug on the phone line in case we got calls. We walked the property, scouting escape routes, peeking through neighbors' windows. No one was around. Still, Keith didn't like surprises.

Finally, we tackled the garage. We spent two days moving junk to the basement, sweeping and cleaning, mounting tables and hanging lights, until the space was as spotless as a laboratory. Which was exactly what it would become.

They used to build bombs in basements, Keith said. We'd just finished and were standing near the open door admiring our handiwork. But garages are better. Any stand-alone structure. The Weathermen found that out too late. You know about the town-house explosion in New York?

On Eleventh Street, I said, near Fifth Avenue. I walked past it once. They rebuilt the house, but you can still tell. It looks different, much newer than the others.

Yeah, well, those guys made a lot of mistakes, he said. But still, they were on the right track. Speeches don't spotlight the world's problems. You need to be louder.

With that, Keith turned to sort through a box of tools he'd bought a few towns away. I went inside to make dinner.

Though I didn't know it then, that brief conversation would be one of the only times we discussed the devices that would soon define our lives. Keith—and, to a lesser extent, Lindsay—just seemed so
at ease
with the idea of explosives—wires and caps, plastics and springs, batteries and detonators. The cold components of violence. I was living, I realize now, in a kind of peer-pressurized bubble, where the increasing irrationality of my existence was tempered by the ostensible sanity of everyone around me. I went with the flow of things, dispassionately, as if removing myself from emotion might justify my actions, make them easier to perform, and digest. It had worked in the aftermath of Bobby's death, after all. Is it spilling into these words, the icy objectivity, the obsessive detachment, of those early days? Perhaps it's for the best, because that's how I felt (that's how the entire house felt). If Keith and Lindsay were comfortable with this life, then I would be, too. Questions still plagued me, of course, not because they had no answers, but because they were never posed. It was as if challenging each other, probing beneath the surface of our surreal reality, into ethics, say, and responsibility, had been deemed unnecessary, irrelevant. Keith was right: bombs
had
worked before. In this country, in every country. They had worked until they hadn't (morally, at least), and it was up to us to recognize that line and not cross it. To me, it fell before the word
casualties,
and as long as that remained clear, I would let the rising wave of adrenaline take me where it would. I was buoyed by belief and a sense of creeping destiny. I needed to prove myself. See something through. For once.

Anyway, Keith was a realist. He wasn't interested in the tired rhetoric of radicals past—class warfare, overthrowing governments—but rather, in highlighting specific evils. Making progress in dramatic increments. America, he argued, had long ago moved past the potential for mass revolt. Change would now come from working
with
the system, manipulating its weaker components, burrowing into its cracks and fissures. He was talking about exploiting the media—its hunger for high drama, its appetite for fear. And that's exactly what he—what
we
—would provide.

What were those evils? They were legion of course. Every night we talked about the latest front-page horrors—wars of religion, cultures of corruption, an economy on life support. Record-setting temperatures in Anchorage. Kidnappings in the Middle East. Never-ending nuclear threats. The young Obama administration, once a source of so much hope, had moved to the center, as they all do. And that left the idealists—America's true patriots—on the outside looking in, or worse, looking away, in disgust. But our developing platform went well beyond party politics, left-wing or—certainly—right. Politics should grow from people, and people just weren't engaged. They didn't understand. And that's where we came in. Keith believed the ills of the country, of mankind, could be traced to one word:
energy.
And America's energy policy is what he intended to change.

Our days took on a regimented form. The three of us met every morning over coffee, then went our separate ways. Lindsay drove to work. Keith went to the garage or made a supply run (which, I assumed, included some form of contact with our mysterious backers). I sat down at the computer. My job was research and logistics—identifying potential targets and then systematically eliminating them until we were left with a logical short list. For hours every afternoon I searched the darker corners of the Web, seeking fragility in a country built on strength. At night we assembled for dinner and talked through the day—or Lindsay talked and we listened. At some point we drifted to the couches, read newspapers, played cards or Scrabble. This was important to Keith, the veneer of normalcy, the idea that our lives were like everyone else's—work and leisure, wake and sleep. We grew close, bonded by the weight of circumstance. We needed to control as much of our reality as we could, keep luck and surprise from our lives, and this meant open communication. Small sleights and recriminations were immediately addressed or forgotten. There were no drugs, not much alcohol. We became hyperaware of our moods and steered clear of conflict. That we were three in number was no accident. The history of groups—of
cells
—like ours was rife with threesomes. We were small enough to keep secrets, large enough to hold debates. But we were hardly a
democracy. We talked, then Keith made a decision and we moved on. Yet, each of us felt integral to the success, the very existence, of the group.

If we were never quite friends in the traditional sense, that was fine, too. Even preferred. My relationship with Lindsay was especially vulnerable, for it was unnatural. If we'd met one night at a party, been introduced as friends of friends, we'd no doubt have smiled, then quickly turned our backs and wandered off—not out of malice but lack of interest. Maybe we'd have pegged each other as types—she, the knee-jerk objector, malleable and easily manipulated; me, a threat, quiet and a bit haughty. But in that house we quickly reached a level of accommodation, understanding, respect. Keith was careful not to upset the balance by introducing—or reintroducing—sexual feeling or desire. If Lindsay took issue with the two of us home together day after day, she didn't mention it. Likewise, I put their history where it belonged—behind us.

Our routine held for three weeks, then broke. It was lunchtime on a sunny weekday afternoon. Lindsay was at work and I was online. I didn't hear the front door open, or any footsteps, just Keith's voice:

Care to join me for a drive?

I jumped in my chair.

Of course, I said, trying quickly to recover. But even as I said the words, I knew it would be anything but a leisurely drive. Why? Because a fundamental rule of the house was that someone would always be there, to ward off hunters or hikers or mailmen or worse. In other words, he needed me. I turned the laptop off and walked out to the car.

Keith locked the front door, the sliding deck door, double-checked the garage door, then scanned the woods around the property. Satisfied, he climbed behind the wheel and we started north. He drove slowly, cautiously, like a driving instructor with a new student, and it took almost an hour to get to the highway. Where were we going? Keith didn't say. But I'd gotten used to his reticence, had even come to admire it. I thought I understood where it was coming from.

We tried the radio and eventually found a news station—a report on the latest round of violence in Palestine. Keith turned it up. I gazed out the window.

You should listen, he said.

Why? It's been the same story all my life.

A great story, Keith said. The ultimate story.

Israel and Palestine? The whole thing's unbearable.

On the contrary, it's what we're all about. It's our proof.

I turned and looked at him. It was an odd statement. Plenty of activists I knew—including several Jews—supported Palestine. Ours was a business of underdogs, of contrarians, and Palestine fit the bill. But ancient religious struggles weren't Keith's forte. He was solidly a man of his time.

Proof of what? I asked.

That this works. Small acts. Targeted violence.

Terrorism, I said.

That's a trumped-up word and you know it, he said, waving his hand dismissively. If the Palestinians had sat around waiting for a diplomatic solution, they'd have no land left.
There is no leverage without violence or the threat of it.
It's the ultimate fact of world affairs. Look at Pakistan. They have the bomb. If they didn't, we'd have been in there a decade ago. Iran. Syria. North Korea. They get nukes, they're players; without them, only actors. Look at Iraq— Sorry . . .

It's fine, I said, though it wasn't. I suddenly felt hot. Self-conscious. Angry.

Well, you know what I'm trying to—

Sure.

The towns gave way to farmland, rolling fields of heather and hay, then forest, thick and green. We had the interstate almost to ourselves. At one point I held the wheel while Keith unfolded a map and studied it. I glanced down and saw handwritten directions scrawled along the white borders.

We're close, he said.

Ten minutes later we pulled off the highway and followed a backcountry road deep into the middle of nowhere. Deer grazed along the shoulders, unafraid, oblivious.

The turn's coming up, Keith said. There should be a sign.

Saying what?

No trespassing.

We pulled up beside a gap in the trees, which, upon closer inspection, revealed two overgrown tire tracks heading into the brush—the beginnings of a rudimentary path.

No sign, I said.

But this has to be it. Keith looked up and down the main road and, seeing no one, turned onto the trail. It was slow going. Tall grass had grown up between the tracks, hiding rocks and ruts that slowed us to a crawl.

No one's been up here in a while, Keith said.

Is that good or bad?

Don't know.

We pressed on. The road became an incline, then a hill. Twice we got stuck and had to back our way down to attack the offending ditch at speed. The third time it happened, Keith stopped the car and cut the engine.

Too bumpy, he said.

We can make it farther.

I'm worried about the way back down.

What do you mean? I asked.

But he was already out of the car and opening the trunk. He rooted around awhile before emerging with a large flashlight and bolt cutters.

We can walk from here, he said, slamming the trunk shut. Shouldn't be far.

It had been a warm, muggy day back in semicivilization, but in the woods, under a canopy of leaves, it was dusky and cool and the ground crackled underfoot. We hiked uphill, maybe two hundred yards, then came upon a single, heavy chain drooping across the path. Signs were attached to the wooden support stakes on either side.

Government Property
No Trespassing
Violators Will Be Prosecuted

But another sign had Keith's attention:

Land Monitored by State Police
Department of Transportation
Department of Homeland Security

Keith shook his head. Fucking idiots. What kid wouldn't trespass after reading that?

By the looks of it, though, we were the first. The faint tire tracks ended and the forest closed in around us. We proceeded in single file, Keith's shoulders brushing past branches that kept springing back and hitting me so that I had to walk with my arms up, like a boxer. In time, the land leveled out into a plateau of sorts. Keith stopped. He was staring at a large concrete structure in the middle of a clearing. Behind it, the trail ended and the land rose up sharply, becoming a steep, mountainous rock face.

This is it, he said.

It looks like a fallout shelter.

It's a storage facility for the road crews.

The only entrance was a massive door adorned with more warnings and related consequences. Keith handed me the flashlight and I pointed it at the padlock. It was thick and shiny, seemingly impenetrable.