With her crew crowded around her in their van, Jan Fields watched the live feed they were getting of the Federal officials and FBI agents being hustled down the ramp of a commercial airliner in Las Vegas, Nevada. “Do you think that there is a Biblical message in this?” Ito Saitama, the sound tech, ventured as they watched.

“What do you mean?” Jan asked without taking her eyes off the monitor.

“Well,” Ito explained. “Maybe this is Governor Thomas’s way of telling the FBI and Department of Justice to try their luck elsewhere.”

Angela Carter, the cameraman, not generally known for her humor, managed to crack a smile. “Somehow, I think a man like GO Thomas wouldn’t miss that sort of connection.”

Jan didn’t say anything. Instead she leaned back in her tiny seat and shook her head. She was still upset that somehow a story like this unfolded just blocks away from the hotel where she was sleeping without her knowing it. “You’re slipping, old girl,” she whispered to herself as she caught a glimpse of Special Agent Tim Werner.

“What was that?” Ito asked, perking his ears up.

“Oh,” Jan replied with a wave of her hand as she finally tore her eyes from the monitor and swiveled the chair to face her companions. “I said, you’re both forgetting that it takes more than an order from the governor to close down the Federal building and expel all officials and agents of the Federal government from Idaho. There’s a lot of people who have to be willing to put their butts on the line for something that is more than your average everyday run of the mill political grandstanding.”

“Political grandstanding?” Angela shot back. “Are you trying to tell me that this is nothing but a stunt?”

The sound tech laughed before asking Jan if she thought the governor had lost his mind, a question many people across America were asking themselves that morning.

Jan didn’t need to think before responding. She had already managed to sort out the political landscape of the story she was covering long before this slow motion train wreck had occurred. “Idaho is far too small for a man like Thomas or the agenda he has been promoting. Somehow I have the feeling that he expects to walk out of the executive mansion here in Boise two years from now and right into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. By making a radical statement like this he not only locks down the popular support of the people who have come to fear or resent the power of their own government, he stands to win those who have been praying on bent knee for a national leader who had the gonads to stand up for what he believed in. In the twinkling of an eye he has gained national recognition as a man of action, unafraid to confront a system many feel has run amuck.”