Like everything Epstein did, the information was clear and well calculated. It had all Cooper needed but nothing that gave it away. If someone had looked in the briefcase, they might have guessed he was a secret agent, but they’d have no idea that they were looking at plans for the assassination of the nation’s most dangerous terrorist.
There was a map recommending a route from this parking lot to an address in Leibniz, a town on the west side of the Holdfast. A three-hour drive that seemed to take him out of the way; a closer look at the map showed that it skirted a research facility that no doubt raised the security standard. The itinerary indicated someone arriving in Leibniz tonight and staying in a house nestled up against the Shoshone National Forest. Photos showed a pleasant cabin atop a mountain ridge. A second-story balcony and lots of glass would offer stunning views of pine forests sweeping to cottonwoods at the base. Four tall fingers of rock jutted improbably up a mile down the ridge. No nearby neighbors. Schematics showed that the cabin possessed a few security upgrades—cameras front and back, bulletproof glass, steel-frame doors on the ground level—but nothing startling.
It belonged to a woman named Helen Epeus. He didn’t recognize the name, but there was something there, some connection he couldn’t quite grab. Let it marinate.
The documents suggested Epeus was a lover. The unnamed target had visited before, often arriving at night and leaving in the morning. It stated that a small security team would be there as well, but dryly noted that “their motion within the house seems restricted.”
Translation: Smith doesn’t want his security team watching him get down.
He took out the sidearm. Thumbed the magazine release. A full load, hollow-points. Body armor would stop them, but if they hit flesh, they’d shred on impact, tiny razors spinning inside fragile tissue. Two spare magazines, though why he would need that many rounds he couldn’t imagine.
Cooper had been army, never trusted a weapon he hadn’t disassembled himself, so he took a few moments to break it down. Everything was clean and cared for. He put it back together with practiced ease, then locked the safety, and put it back in the case.
When he was done, the sun had dropped, and the clock read two. He started the truck, revved the engine a couple of times for fun, and rolled out.
It was doable.
The drive had taken a bit under the recommended three hours, Cooper not opening the truck up, but certainly making the most of the smooth, straight roads. The scenery changed as he moved west, growing greener; not lush, but the air was sweet. The sky seemed bigger than it had a right to, and bright, with dramatic clouds forming high above the mountains to the west. He raced from cloud shadow to cloud shadow, watching the world turn colors as he went and trying not to think too much. He had that mission energy, that sense he always used to get when weeks of patterning a target were starting to click together, as though destiny was a bright neon line he could follow down the pavement.
John Smith. The man who had watched as seventy-three people were executed in the Monocle. Who had orchestrated a wave of attacks across the country. Who had planted the bombs at the Exchange in New York that had killed 1,163 in a blast wave that had shaken Cooper free of his real life and cast him adrift on this strange new path.
Even after everything Cooper had read about him, after every speech he’d watched, every friend he’d met, after talking to the shithead administrator of that academy in West Virginia, the real John Smith was a mystery. There were the facts: his gift for strategy, his success as a political organizer, his ability to inspire people. There were the myths, which varied depending on which side you were on. There were the rumors and the whispers. There was Shannon, saying he was a nice guy and believing it.
But the man himself? He was a play of shadows, a dream of a monster or a hero.