The Days of Noah: Book One: Conspiracy

by Mark Goodwin

  Courtney put her hands on her hips. “Did you know that’s actually a line in a horror movie?”

  It struck Everett how creepy that must have sounded. “Oh, yeah. That sounds bad. I’m sorry . . .”

  Courtney cut him off. “Just teasing, I left it in my car.”

  Everett had underestimated Courtney. She was tuned in and evidently didn’t trust her bosses either. He closed the door, and they walked to the car.

  On the way, Courtney pulled out a different phone. “Just to let you know, I have a burner that I took the battery out of.”

  Everett was really starting to like this girl. “In case I’m a stalker?”

  Courtney laughed. “In case we break down. If you’re a stalker, that phone is the least of your worries.”

  They stopped by the Thai restaurant to pick up dinner and headed out to the cabin.

  Courtney looked over at Everett. “Looks like your source was right about America’s ability to fend off the assault on the dollar. At least for the short term. If inflation takes off too fast, we still may have a collapse of the US financial system.”

  Everett kept his eyes on the road. “Whatever happens, it will be at a time of the elites’ choosing, and there will be a separate catalyst besides just a financial collapse.”

  Courtney said, “You know the Chinese have nuclear subs two hundred miles off the coast of California?”

  Everett opened his eyes wide. “No! I didn’t know that.”

  “Yep, and they have a carrier taking humanitarian aid to Brazil. The Liaoning and several other ships are in the port of Belem.”

  Everett snickered. “A carrier hauling humanitarian aid, great cover story. Of course, USAID is completely run by the CIA. I suppose that’s no different.”

  Courtney continued, “The Russians have ships in South Africa, also providing aid, but it looks like three just left for Cuba this morning. Everyone at work is getting nervous. Fifty billion dollars was appropriated to buy off media executives to keep the ship movements out of the news. It could be just saber-rattling, but this is starting to look pretty serious.”

  Everett said, “No one told us anything. They keep us in the dark about everything except the specific task we’re working on.”

  Courtney furrowed her brow. “I thought you had high-level clearance. Why wouldn’t you know about such a serious threat?”

  Everett shrugged. “I suppose they figure the less we know, the less potential there is for a leak. My clearance level is DOD collateral clearance.”

  “Oh, I assumed it was higher.” Courtney’s voice had a hint of disappointment.

  “Yours is higher?” Everett asked.

  She flipped her hair. “It doesn’t matter. You obviously have a source that’s getting stuff from the very top.”

  “My source isn’t active.”

  “Uncle John?”

  Everett had said too much. What was he to do? He really liked Courtney and didn’t want to start lying to her, but he also owed his confidence to Agent Jones. “Give me a break.” Everett tried to laugh it off.

  Courtney didn’t fall for it. “Oh, come on. He’s the only person in your family that you talk to, and I can’t take a phone up there; this isn’t a grand mystery.”

  Everett didn’t say anything. Jones was the one who wanted to meet her, after all. If he was mad, it was his own fault.

  She patted his leg. “But I won’t make you say it, if it makes you feel better.”

  Everett wasn’t about to confirm or deny her accusations. He was happy she wasn’t going to push the matter further, but it was obvious that she’d figured it out.

  Courtney looked through the takeout bag for a snack. “Anyway, the reason I wanted to talk to you in person was to ask you what you’re planning to do if things do go south. Whether it’s your conspiracy theory, the meltdown of the financial system due to a cyber attack or decades of bad economic policies, or a hot war with China and Russia, the future is starting to look bleak.”

  Everett smiled. “I think you’re going to like Uncle John’s cabin.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

  Ron Paul

  Noah Parker arrived at the Country Kettle with his family Wednesday evening. Cassie ensured that they were fashionably late by changing her mind about what she would wear not once, but twice. Noah didn’t make a fuss about it. As the guests of honor, it made sense for them to arrive after everyone else had been given a chance to get there.

  Isaiah met them outside. “There’s the happiest family on earth.”

  Noah held Lacy’s hand with one hand and Cassie’s with the other. “I feel like the most blessed man on earth. There is nothing like tragedy to remind you of what you have.”

  Isaiah nodded as he held the door for them.

  Inside, Sharon laid out a buffet of fall flavors. She kept the kitchen help at the Kettle and sent the rest of the staff home. The kitchen staff made a honey ham, macaroni salad, a fruit plate, warm rolls, pecan bars, and a hazelnut cream pumpkin pie. Sharon personally made each guest a hot apple cider topped with whipped cream and caramel. Some people sat at the tables to eat, but most milled around the buffet table as they talked. Most everyone from Isaiah’s Bible study was there, and also a few of the Parkers’ other friends from church.

  Noah shook hands with Jim Taylor. “Thanks for coming out, Sheriff.”

  Jim smiled. “You can stick to calling me Jim. Besides, this is just temporary.”

  “Won’t you run in the election?” Noah sipped his cider.

  Jim nodded. “Sure, but there’s no guarantee I’ll win. I made some enemies when I cleaned house. In addition to that, by refusing to play ball with DHS, the department has lost all of our federal funding. The sheriff’s department is going to have to learn how to do its job with fewer resources. A cutback in services won’t be popular with voters.

  “We’re also losing the MRAP and some of the other equipment that we received through the DOD 1033 program.”

  Noah shrugged. “Sevier County doesn’t really need an armored vehicle, does it?”

  “I hope not. I suppose it will depend on the feds. We’ve lost the carrot for not participating in the federal program, but we’ve yet to find out what the stick will consist of.”

  “When you say the stick, you’re saying that you expect some type of physical retaliation from DHS for refusing to comply?” Noah tried to understand what Jim was hinting at.

  “I hope not. I think DHS has their hands full right now, but if we see the type of economic collapse and heavy-handed government response that Cassie is predicting, our county will be at the top of the list for the feds to demonstrate what happens to dissenters.”

  “Are you saying that you would instruct your deputies to confront DHS?”

  Jim raised his eyebrows. “I’m saying I’ll instruct my men to stand their ground and fulfill their oaths. I pray it never comes to that, but I have to run the scenario in my mind in case it does.”

  “A few deputies wouldn’t stand a chance against the federal government.” Noah rubbed his chin as he thought about what Jim was implying.

  “We’d need the citizens to be on board as well, and prepared.”

  “You mean, like a militia?”

  “Something like that.”

  Benny Loomis walked up to Noah. “I wanted to congratulate you on winning your custody case. It must have been horrible not having Lacy during that time.”

  Noah shook Benny’s hand. “It was tough, but knowing she was in good hands made it bearable. If we hadn’t known the person who had custody of her, I would’ve gone nuts. You hear so many horror stories about foster homes where children are neglected, physically abused, or sexually abused. That’s another arena that the government doesn’t belong in.”

  Benny replied, “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Jim put his finger up to signal that he’d be back in a little while. Noah waved to acknowledge the sign. “Benny, you said you wen
t through something like what I’m going through.”

  Benny looked from side to side. “I worked for the government for several decades. More specifically, the NSA. I was part of the team that developed the Thinthread Program, which was designed to monitor electronic communications and digital activity of potential terrorists. The team I worked with wanted to be sure that certain restrictions were placed on Thinthread so that it couldn’t be used for wholesale surveillance of the American public. But our research was handed over to a government contractor and used in developing a different program, one without the safeguards for US citizens. It was called Trailblazer. Trailblazer was the predecessor to Prism, which actively spied on all phone calls, emails, and social media posts until it was recently decommissioned.”

  Noah was surprised. “Prism was decommissioned? Does that mean the government isn’t spying on us anymore?”

  Benny chuckled. “No. There is a vastly more powerful network that handles domestic surveillance now. I still talk with some old friends who keep tabs on things at the Puzzle Palace. From what I gather, the new system is the most advanced artificial intelligence computer ever imagined. It thinks like you and I do, but with much greater capacity. It takes in data from every cell phone, Facebook post, Google search, traffic camera, banking transaction, and credit card purchase. It uses that data to profile every user and store their digital history according to their Social Security number. For people who try to use online aliases, it watches for patterns and tries to associate them to their Social Security numbers. It knows you by name. It knows where you shop, how much money you make, who you call, what videos you watch on YouTube, what temperature you like, how much you weigh . . .”

  Noah cut Benny off. “How does it know what temperature I like?”

  “Thermal imaging drones and satellites that take readings from inside your home.”

  “This thing has its own satellites?”

  “Oh yes,” Benny replied.

  “And how does it know my weight?”

  “Gas purchases, traffic cams, grocery purchases, cell phone triangulation, that sort of thing. It calculates how much gas you spend, the average mileage for your truck, where you go, tire pressure, and does the math. Those calculations can tell it how much you weigh.”

  Noah was totally baffled. “How could it come up with tire pressure?”

  “Traffic cams on the way to the grocery and on the way home. Through your credit card, it knows what you bought, how much it weighs, and how the weight difference affects your tire pressure. It probably knows you better than you know yourself. It was developed to be omniscient, like God. While it may never know your innermost thoughts or keep count of the hairs on your head, mimicking the omniscience and omnipresence of the Almighty is the goal of its designers.”

  Noah blinked to try to clear the image from his mind. “How creepy!”

  “Yes, but it’s necessary to fulfill Bible prophecy. If we’re to have a one-world currency, and no one is to be able to buy or sell without the mark of the beast, a very complex monitoring apparatus is necessary.”

  Noah reluctantly acknowledged what the existence of such a system meant for the future. “I’ve always believed in Bible prophecy, but I never realized the technology already existed. I suppose I’ve always thought we’d be out of here by the time something like that came along. Don’t you believe in a pretribulation rapture?”

  Benny tilted his head from side to side. “Like Isaiah said at the Bible study a while back, one could believe in a pretribulation rapture and still expect things to get very oppressive between now and then. I think we are seeing the beginning of the end. The start of the Tribulation is marked by Revelation 6, which says in verse eight that a quarter of the earth is to be killed by sword, famine, and plague. With the current global population, that’s 1.75 billion people, nearly six times the population of the US. In apocalyptic terms, this entire country could die off, and it wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket. Which reminds me, China and Russia are both specifically mentioned in prophetic scripture, but nothing that definitively sounds like America is ever mentioned. It could be because we are no longer a going concern.”

  The concept of America not existing hit Noah like a ton of bricks.

  Isaiah walked up and put his hand on Noah’s shoulder. “Having fun?”

  Noah responded sarcastically, “Yeah, loads.”

  Isaiah laughed. “What’s wrong?”

  Noah shook his head. “Benny and I got off on a rabbit trail about the Tribulation and how tough things could get around here.”

  Isaiah sighed. “Well, it makes sense to be prepared for whatever. Proverbs twenty-two verse three says a prudent man sees danger and takes refuge. So how did that conversation come up?”

  Just then, they were interrupted as Cassie came up and took Noah’s hand. He was unsure how much of Benny’s story he was supposed to share. “Uh, Benny was asking about the trial. What were you saying, Benny?”

  Benny looked at Isaiah. “I was telling Noah about my experience with the NSA.”

  Cassie’s eyes lit up. “The NSA?”

  Benny brought Cassie up to speed on the story and proceeded to describe his ordeal to the Parkers. “Shortly after 9/11, several of us from the Thinthread team learned about the domestic spying capabilities of Trailblazer, and we filed a formal complaint with the Department of Defense Inspector General. You have to understand, most of us on the Thinthread team had worked at the NSA since the 1970s or early ‘80s. We’d been taught that spying on the American public was something that you never ever do. We were all shocked at what the agency was willing to do.”

  Cassie was listening intently. “What happened when you filed the complaint?”

  Benny snickered. “The complaint was swept under the rug, so we took it to Congress. We found a sympathetic ear in a top House Intelligence Committee staffer. She drew up a memo and distributed it to the members of the committee. Her boss, who was the chairman of the committee, Congressman Goss, sent her straight to NSA Director Michael Hayden. Hayden basically told her to stop making waves.”

  Noah asked, “Was it just your team who knew about the program and tried to put a stop to it?”

  Benny shook his head. “No. Several Department of Justice attorneys were also against it, including at least one from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel and another, Tom Tamm, who worked with the FISA court.”

  Cassie interjected, “And FISA is the court that issues warrants for domestic spying?”

  Benny nodded. “Yes, they were set up as a watchdog to prevent the abuse of power by the government. Domestic spying without a warrant from FISA is a federal felony. The FISA attorney also got nowhere with his complaints and threatened to inform the press.

  “When the concerns were brought to Attorney General John Ashcroft, he informed the administration that he wouldn’t sign off to renew the program when it expired. Ashcroft mysteriously had a pancreatitis attack that almost killed him, days after refusing to sign. Since General Ashcroft was incapacitated, Deputy AG James Comey became the acting Attorney General. When he also refused to sign off, Vice President Cheney had the program renewal order redrafted to remove the signature line for the AG and include a line for White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, who was on board with the program. If you’re the President or Vice President, and what you want to do is illegal, just change the law to make it legal. This sort of thing happens all the time in Washington.

  “Long story short, a whole slew of folks, including Acting Attorney General Comey and even FBI Director Mueller, threatened to resign over the renewal. Since it was an election year, Bush rescinded the order and found a sympathetic FISA judge to secretly authorize the renewal under a different legal theory.

  “DOJ Attorney Thomas Tamm decided to leak the program to the New York Times, who eventually ran the story. Next, a landslide of leaked stories hit the press. When that happened, the administration came after all the dissenters. Everyone from the Thinthread team who signed the
original DOD complaint had their homes raided by the FBI. When I was raided, I felt like I lived in a communist country. My wife looked at me like I’d done something wrong to bring this on the family. Eventually, my family fell apart, and I became a recluse. Some of us were indicted, but the charges were either dropped or reduced to minor charges. It was primarily a scare tactic to let federal employees know that dissent is not tolerated.

  “Of course, despite campaign promises about transparency and reining in the surveillance state, Obama increased the unconstitutional powers of the federal government by signing the 2012 NDAA, which contained the indefinite detention clause, which provides for US citizens to be held indefinitely and without being charged with a crime.

  “I suspect that Edward Snowden will be the last whistleblower of our kind.”

  Cassie looked puzzled. “Why? Don’t you think there are any true patriots left?”

  Benny replied, “There may be some patriots, but after the New York Times article in 2005, the Baltimore Sun article in 2006, and several others outing the federal government for the warrantless surveillance, the public did nothing. There were no massive protests. The Congress who’d sat idly by while the Bush administration pulled this off was never tossed out on their ears, and everyone went back to their day-to-day lives without so much as a shrug. For the people who blew the whistle, it cost us everything: our jobs, our families, the money we spent fighting trumped-up charges, our right to not have our doors kicked in in during the middle of the night, everything. But America didn’t care enough to write a letter to their representatives or refuse to vote for anyone who wouldn’t vow to restore our freedom.

  “Years later, Edward Snowden sacrificed his citizenship to tell the American people about the atrocities that were being committed by the federal government. By then, the public had become rooted in their complacency. I’m convinced nothing will dislodge them at this point, so why would anyone else make such sacrifices to warn them? It’s too late anyway. In 2006, an enraged public could have effected a change; when the Snowden leaks came out in 2013, perhaps there was still some hope if Americans would have stood up together. Not today. The infrastructure is established, the Constitution has been nullified, and we’re just waiting for the catalyst. When it comes, we’re in for a totalitarian regime that will make Hitler, Mao, and Stalin look like Sunday school teachers.”