Donny took the seat Lecker had pointed at, which faced Lecker on the opposite side of a small table that folded out from the fuselage. On the table were a tablet computer, a tumbler fizzing with club soda and lime, and an aviation map of the Mississippi River delta, with New Orleans there in the upper-right-hand quadrant. The map had been annotated by hand, in a way that reminded Donny of the diagrams the coaches used to draw on the whiteboard after football practice. Diagrams Donny was so bad at understanding that they kicked him off the team before the first game sophomore year, which was not really a bad thing because Donny seriously sucked at the game, but in those days was still trying to do things that would please his dad instead of actively seeking the things that would piss him off.

Donny looked at his onetime dentist, and onetime friend of his dad’s, sitting there planning some kind of corporate invasion of the neighboring state, and wondered which strategy he would take with this representative of the collection of fucked-up patriarchs Donny had collected in his life. A type, as he and Joyce had once joked, that America was very good at producing, Donny had a knack for getting tangled up with, and Joyce had a desire to exterminate. Of course, back then, she wanted to exterminate them with ideas.

Through the window, Donny saw the soldiers unloading from the bus that had brought them out from one of the buildings, and then boarding the big passenger jet. They weren’t dressed like soldiers. More like the world’s biggest rich-guy hunting party, in their high-end technical gear and field wear, but each carrying an Armalite rifle along with whatever gear of their own they had brought.

“Thank you, Governor,” said Lecker. “I will send you an update as soon as I can.”

Then he hung up. And looked at Donny with the same kind of disappointed face as when Donny had allowed the perfectly fine tooth God had given him to get knocked loose by someone he had given lip to.

“So you have come back empty-handed,” said Lecker.

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” said Donny.

“You are alone. Our stolen seeds are still shipping. Heather is still in their custody. You have nothing for me.”

“Heather is free. I told Lou.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t exactly know. She took off with her boyfriend.”

“Oh.”

“Who is my client. The lead plaintiff in my lawsuit against a company in which I just learned you are the controlling shareholder.”

“In which Heather’s trust is the controlling shareholder,” he corrected.

“She told me the real deal.”

“Did she? And what makes you think she even knows what the real deal is? She’s a lost child. A runaway. She’s lucky those treasonous terrorists haven’t killed her.”