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Chapter 12<br />
A BULL’S-EYE ON MY BACK<br />
What’s wrong, baby?” Julia asked as she lay in bed next to Ross, admiring his jawline. Ross<br />
didn’t respond to her. He was too busy reading a news article about the Silk Road.<br />
He knew there might be a hostile response from the government after the article from Adrian<br />
Chen at Gawker, published a couple of days earlier. But this was a far worse response than his<br />
imagination had ever come up with.<br />
With trepidation he clicked to play a video in the article he was reading. There, in a small<br />
rectangular window, stood Senator Chuck Schumer at a press conference podium, a vexed look on his<br />
face. To the senator’s right and left, two large, oversize printouts of the Silk Road Web site rested on<br />
display stands. Below him, on the wooden rostrum, the blue, white, and gold insignia of the U.S.<br />
Senate was clear for the press corps, and Ross, to see.<br />
“It’s a certifiable one-stop shop for illegal drugs that represents the most brazen attempt to<br />
peddle drugs online that we have ever seen,” Schumer said to a gaggle of press. “It’s more brazen<br />
than anything else by light-years.”<br />
Oh heck!<br />
This really wasn’t good. Sure, Ross wanted recognition and attention. But this was more than he<br />
had ever anticipated, especially so early in the life of his drug bazaar.<br />
The video cut to a scene of Schumer sitting in front of a computer, Ross’s drug site on the screen.<br />
The senator’s finger traversed the Silk Road as he listed off all of the goodies that were for sale.<br />
“Heroin, opium, cannabis, ecstasies, psychedelics, stimulants,” Schumer said (briefly showing how<br />
out of touch he was with the topic at hand as he made “ecstasy” plural). The sound of camera flashes<br />
burst—pop! pop! pop!—as Schumer said in disbelief, “You name it, they have it!”<br />
Ross felt sick as he read the article that accompanied the news clip, which noted that both<br />
Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin, then the junior senator from West Virginia, had asked the<br />
Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration to shut down the Amazon of drugs—<br />
immediately.<br />
Fudge! Friggin’ fudge! Ross had picked a fight with the biggest bully on earth, and the bully was<br />
about to punch back.
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