Free 02 Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel by Tim Lahaye

bust open the media monopoly that the White House had willingly allowed to develop and exploited for political purposes. The Roundtable was a secret group of like-minded business, political, and financial leaders with Joshua at its head. Together they had launched AmeriNews to counter the encroaching information censorship that had taken place throughout the country. Joshua had been so absorbed in receiving the RTS documents that he missed the headlines on his own news service.
    “Okay,” Ted said, “AmeriNews reports — and this is just two hours ago — that they are questioning whether the Feds are being forthright in the investigation of the Chicago air disaster.”
    “Any details?”
    “No. Not yet. Just speculation. Wish they’d give us some specific information.”
    Joshua knew why they couldn’t. Phil Rankowitz, the Roundtable’s media leader for AmeriNews, must not have been able to dig up anything either, even with the help of his high-octane team of investigative reporters.
    “Okay, Ted,” Joshua had to admit, “I dreaded finding some design flaw in our commercial RTS. Frankly, I can’t see it yet. But I don’tlike not knowing either. Thanks for assembling the team and putting together all the schematics so quickly. Good effort. I’m flying back to Hawk’s Nest — as soon as Billy fuels up the jet.”
    After Ted left, Joshua called Phil Rankowitz and talked to him about the upcoming meeting of the Roundtable at his Colorado estate. “Phil, I just read your headline blurb.”
    “About the Chicago jet shootdown?”
    “Right. What do you know that I don’t? And what aren’t you able to say yet on AmeriNews?”
    “Only one thing. There’s a blogger who keeps popping up with stuff that drives the media moguls and the White House crazy. He runs something called Leak-o-paedia. Remember the old days of WikiLeaks, the blog that used to post highlevel leaks and cause all kinds of chaos? Well, this is the next generation, but with a twist. This guy is different. He doesn’t just get classified documents and dump them into the public sphere. He does the old-fashioned, high-definition kind of investigative reporting where there’s honest-to-gosh highlevel corruption, then posts his stories before he gets shut down.”
    “Who is he?”
    “A former investigative reporter named Belltether … used to work at a newspaper before print journalism went the way of the dodo bird.”
    “What’s his angle?”
    “Not sure, but one of our AmeriNews stringers says he heard from a friend of a friend who knows Belltether that he’s working on a scoop on the Flight 199 attack.”
    “I think you’ve got something up your sleeve, Phil.”
    “I do. If his story checks out, we may want to buy it as an Ameri News exclusive. Belltether doesn’t sound like he’s rolling in dollars. If he’s a former print reporter, he’s probably living off a diet of grub worms by now. I’m sure we could work a deal with him, offer him money to hire him for an exclusive, give him our platform.”
    “Sounds like a plan. I’ve got some things of my own I need to bring up at the Roundtable. See you in a couple of days at Hawk’s Nest.”
    After the call, Joshua hit speed dial on his Allfone for an encrypted number.
    It rang three times and a man picked up. “Patriot” was all he said.
    Joshua could tell it was Pack McHenry, the head of the private unit of former spies and ex-intelligence “spooks” that the Roundtable occasionally worked with.
    “Pack, we need to talk. I’ve got a crisis.”
    “By my book, you’ve got more than one. Which crisis are you calling about?”
    Joshua pondered that and said, “The missile attack on Flight 199.”
    “We’re still working on that. Nothing new. But I expect something to break any day.”
    “What other crisis are you talking about?”
    “National security. The nuke threat. The things I’d mentioned to you and the Roundtable some time ago but could never nail down. It looks