I did laugh. “Okay, I get the point.”

“Don’t dwell on the negative, Eric. Soon, you’ll realize this country has just been blessed with an Independent president who could never have won a popular election, and we’ve been delivered from the D.C. machine and all the slime it supported. All in one day. Wow!”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what Hassan said when he saw the mushroom cloud one second before he was vaporized. Bethesda adjoins D.C. It was destroyed along with it. This wasn’t a briefcase weapon! That was part of Homeland Security’s propaganda to keep the public in places like New York from recognizing the apocalypse they could become involved in. They slipped in the real thing. Homeland Security was about corruption and setting up a police state, something like Switzerland, maybe. They were so inept they couldn’t even prevent a full-fledged, nuclear bomb from being slipped into the Capitol! D.C. and Baltimore and everything else in the area. Gone . . . gone forever! I can’t fathom it!”

“I forgot about Hassan! You’re right. He did say he lived in Bethesda. Poor man . . . “

”Millions of Hassans died today. You just didn’t know them. I’ll talk to you when you get here.”

“Please don’t stew . . . Think of positive things until I get there. You need me, I can tell. Remember Aruba and La Cantina . . . that night. That’s what life’s about. It isn’t about national monuments or even corrupt politicians. Politicians are all assholes! They want the big paycheck, job security, and power over the rest of us. Promise me you’ll think about Aruba.”

“I’ll try. Later, Tiffany.” To be so intelligent, exotic and passionate, she was as cold as ice in the face of so much wanton slaughter and national ruin!

I tried unsuccessfully to reach my partners until late in the evening. Not one of them phoned me. That seemed very mysterious.

The remarkable nature of the events that followed proved that America was wounded, but not overwhelmed, by the Capitol strike. As I write now, the economy is lunging ahead, the very opposite of what the Capitol bombers hoped. Tiffany proved correct, and is the greatest wife any man ever had. The kudos for our miraculous recovery go to one man and one man only: President McKay.

This aside, a reexamination of my motives for forming the Muskets plagued my thoughts throughout the Dog Days. After it mysteriously appeared on the web that NewJoe@blogspot.com was actually the founder of the Muskets, I received email from hundreds of Musket members. The prevailing opinion running through the comments like a golden thread in hindsight was that the terrorists had actually befriended us. It astonished me how many people thought like Tiffany. For my part, I was just happy that NewJoe’s account had been innocuously set up from Calgary, Alberta so the Feds couldn’t trace it to me. I couldn’t be identified if the Feds got interested. It still made me paranoid. Only Carl knew who NewJoe was, and Tiffany of course, and he swore he would never divulge it, not even to Kicks Iron or Christof.