“And what if it doesn’t go smoothly?” Hooker asked.
“Worst case scenario, we might lose as many as two hundred killed and wounded. I make the ratio three or four to one in our favor.’ Depends on how crazy they are.”
“They’re crazy as hell,” Pennington said. “Talking about Armageddon and the Apocalypse.”
“When it starts, they’ll change religion real fast, sir,” James said. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” Pennington mused, half aloud. “It was Vail rushing in there with his damn search warrants,” Hooker said. “He forced Engstrom’s hand.”
“He was doing his job, Claude,” Pennington said. “And I’m not interested in why. Why is yesterday. I have a decision to make and I’m out of time.”
He stood up, walked closer to the map, and studied the battle plan James and his commander, Rembrandt, proposed.
“How quickly can you move, Jesse?”
“We can have the necessary troops and equipment in a staging area at Travis like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Stu has the units on base standby. We’ll close the Missoula municipal airport, bring the troops in in C-140s, and load the Hueys there. It’s fifteen minutes to the target.”
He looked at his watch. It was 7:51. “It’s 5:51 there. We can have our troops in Missoula by four p.m. Mountain Time. Start the incursion at first dark. The weather’s good and there’s no moon. We’ll call it Operation Shining Armor.”
Pennington looked at James and Rembrandt.
“Put them on alert and get them to the staging area,” he said. “Just in case.”
CHAPTER 36
WINSTON, MONTANA, SATURDAY 3:47 P.M., MST
The place was near the small town of Winston, twenty miles east of Helena. The two-story house sat on a knoll overlooking Canyon Ferry Lake, which meandered in an arc at the foot of the Big Belt Mountains. The brick wall surrounding the property vanished into trees on both sides. There was an iron gate at the entrance serviced by two video cameras.
“Guess he’s not expecting us,” Shana Parver said.
“I hope not,” Vail said. “I like surprises.”
“You mean when they get sweat under their nose and their Adam’s apple starts bobbing up and down?”
“Exactly.”
“When they’re not sure which of their crimes we’re on to?”
“Yup.”
Vail stopped at the gate and a burly-looking roughneck in combat fatigues approached the car. Vail showed him his ID.
“My name’s Vail, Assistant U.S. Attorney General, and this is Shana Parver, my associate. That’s U.S. Marshal Sam Firestone in the back, and there are four FBI agents in the car behind me. Open the gate, please.”
The tough-looking man studied them both for a minute and said, “I’ll call the house.”
Vail handed him a search warrant that Meyer had obtained an hour before.
“That won’t be necessary, just open the gate, pal. We don’t want to have to shoot up the locks and all that Wild West stuff.”
The guard chewed on his lower lip for a moment and then activated the lock with a remote. The gates swung outward.
“Thank you,” Vail said. They drove through the gate and down a dirt road toward the house, followed by the FBI car. As they broke out of the trees, the house sprawled before them, a formal two-story faux southern antebellum mansion, a stunning and crass incongruity with the sparkling lake behind it. In back of the house a wooden stairway led down to a pier where a thirty-foot power boat and a single-engine pontoon plane rocked gently on the placid water. Two Mercedes sedans and a Rolls-Royce convertible were parked in a large turnaround in front of a free-standing garage.
Vail parked in front of the columned entrance and walked back to the FBI car. The agent in charge of the team, Harold Ellington, stared at the house.
“Well, you can take the boy out of the South but you can’t take the South out of the boy,” he said. “This joker should be arrested for bad taste.”
“We’re going to drop him for a lot more than that,” Vail said. “We’ll go in and have a talk with Granger. Disperse your guys as you see fit.”
“Right. You going to arrest him right off?”
“Hopefully we’re going to have a little chat first.”
Ellington reached around to the back of his belt and took out a pair of handcuffs. “You’ll need these,” he said. “It’s SOP.”
“Thanks, anyway,” Vail said. “Sam’ll do the honors.” He returned to the car, and Parver and Firestone followed him up to the door.
“Just follow my cue,” Vail said. “I’ll be making some of this up so don’t be surprised.”
“We never are,” Parver said.
They rang the bell and another hard looker in camouflage opened the door.
“Mr. Granger, please?” Vail said.
“Who can I say’s calling?”
Vail showed his identification. “Martin Vail, Assistant United States Attorney General.”
“I’ll see if he’s in.”
“Just take us to him or we’ll find him ourselves,” Firestone said. They entered the foyer, forcing the guard out of the way. Picture windows overlooked the lake and mountains. A marble swimming pool stretched the width of the room in front of the scenic view.
Granger was standing in the doorway to his office as they entered the living room. He was tall and florid-faced with thinning brown hair and a belly that was beginning to show the signs of the good life. In his younger days he would have been considered good-looking, but easy living had softened his features and dulled his eyes. He was wearing jeans, a plaid wool shirt, and cowboy boots.
“Mr. Granger?” Shana Parver said.
“That’s right.”
“Lewis Granger, I’m Martin Vail, U.S. Attorney General’s office,” Vail said, walking across the room. “This is Shana Parver, a prosecutor for our office, and U.S. Marshal Firestone.”
Granger looked at his ID. “So that’s what one of those things looks like,” he said with a smile. “Care for a drink?” Before Vail could respond, he went to the wet bar in a corner of the large room and poured two inches of Wild Turkey into a pebbled old-fashioned glass, dropped a single ice cube in it, and swirled it around with a finger, which he then licked off.
“No thanks,” Vail said.
“So, what is this about? Is the FCC annoyed with me about something?”
“That would be the FCC’s business,” Vail said as Granger led them to his office adjacent to the pool. He sat behind a broad mahogany desk. Behind him, the lake and mountains were framed by sliding glass doors. He motioned them to chairs.
“Must be nice, traveling with a pretty young woman like Miss… was it Parlor?”
“Parver,” Shana said. “Shana Parver.”
“What kind of name is that?” he asked, his smile bordering on a sneer.
“It’s my name,” she answered coolly. “And your name is Lewis Granger, is it not?”
“Oh, I think we’ve established that,” he said, and laughed.
“Good…” she answered, reaching into her shoulder bag and taking out a single-page document. “This is for you.”
She handed him the warrant. He looked at it and the smirk evaporated, replaced for a moment by a cold, stolid stare. Then the bravado and the sneer returned.
“Murder, conspiracy, stealing government property, money laundering. My my, you left off speeding and illegal parking.” He wadded up the warrant and threw it in the wastebasket. “I think we should invite my lawyer in on this little discussion,” he said, and reached for the phone.
Vail laid his hand over Granger’s. “First of all, we delivered the warrant,” he said. “Second, we haven’t read you your rights. Third, until you are Mirandized and formally arrested, you are uncharged. Would you like to talk about this before we go through that procedure, or call your lawyer from the federal building, where you will be treated like any other prisoner until you are arraigned?”
Shana Parver join
ed in. “At that time you may be permitted bond, although I seriously doubt any federal judge would even set bail because of the charges. We would certainly fight any attempt to position bond. So, you’ll sit in a cell until you are tried.”
“Which could be a year or longer, considering the case load on the court here,” Vail said.
Firestone retrieved the warrant from the wastebasket, shook it open, laid it on the desk, and smoothed it out with the flat of his hand. Then he took another warrant out of his pocket and placed it next to the first one.
“This is a search warrant for your home, office, bank accounts, cars, everything,” Parver said. “Everything we haven’t already legally checked—such as your phone records, computer data, etcetera. We will even search your son’s school locker.”
Granger smiled. “He’ll be the hero of the school.”
“Okay, fine, act like a cocky asshole, but understand me,” Vail said. “Right now, at this moment, you have the very last chance you will ever get to plea bargain. This is my case, Mr. Granger, and that’s how I operate. You want to feel out a deal, get your hand off the phone. You want to play hardball…” He took his hand off Granger’s. “… Your decision.”
He leaned back in his chair and waited. Granger lifted the phone and stared at the dial. He looked at Vail, then Parver, then back at the dial. Sweat began to gather on his upper lip. He took a drink of whiskey, then finally reached out slowly and started to dial with his forefinger. Parver stood, reached over the desk, and pressed the disconnect.
“You weren’t listening,” she said. “The way it goes is this. We formally arrest you. We read you your rights. We handcuff you and take you downtown, where you will be fingerprinted and formally processed, then you get to make your call.” She gently took the phone from him and cradled it while Firestone took out a pair of handcuffs and placed them on the corner of the desk.
Granger nervously drummed his desk with his fingertips. “What’s there to talk about?” he said finally, staring at the cuffs. “These charges are ridiculous.”
“You know Dwight Wolf?”
“The name sounds familiar…”
“It should, you talked to him about three hours ago. He called you from the federal building in Helena.”
“Wrong number.”
“Nope, you two had a five-minute chat. Now why would he call you instead of a lawyer?”
“I have no idea.”
“He works for you, Mr. Granger. He’s the chief accountant in the bank you control. In fact, your office is in the same building.”
“I don’t know everybody that works for me….”
“Two of our associates had a very informative and revealing chat with him this afternoon.”
Granger stared at Yail for several seconds. He finished his drink, got up, and poured himself a second.
“Mr. Wolf is a bookkeeper, he doesn’t know anything.”
“You’re the bank, Mr. Granger. You’re the bank, and the propaganda minister, and the money washer for the take from bank robberies, including the three-way job in Montana and an armored car robbery in Seattle in which four guards were murdered in cold blood. You also acted as the salesman for weapons and other government property stolen in the armory robberies around the state.”
Granger chuckled, but his bravado was unraveling. “That’s insane,” he said. “You people are suffering a Rocky Mountain high.”
“We’ve got you cold, Granger,” Vail said. “Conspiracy to commit, which carries the same sentence as actually doing the jobs. You’re what we call the link. You tie the four church brigades to Fort Yahweh. They’re separate entities under the Sanctuary umbrella, and that makes it a RICO case and that means we can take down everyone involved, everyone who knew these events were going to happen and profited by them in some way.”
“You know what a RICO is, don’t you, Mr. Granger?” Parver said. “That’s when you lose all this,” she swept her hand around the room, “and end up doing double digits in Coyote Flats.”
“Or?”
“Or you can corroborate what Mr. Wolf told us this afternoon. He says you came up with the pyramid scheme to launder money. He also says it was your idea to hide the loot from the three-way robbery in safe deposit boxes.”
“If you think that’s true, what do you need me for?”
“Corroboration. You and Wolf can provide the testimony to make this RICO case stick. Without you, we’ll rely on Wolf, and I assure you, you’ll go to the Grave.”
“You think I’d live long enough to get to court?”
“We’ll take care of that.”
“Like you took care of George Waller? Why should I put my life in jeopardy?”
“Because you won’t go to the Grave, you’ll go to a reasonable prison. You won’t do life, no parole, you’ll do five to ten, which means if you’re a good boy, you should be out in three to four years. And then we’ll put you in witness protection. Think about it. Which is it? The full boat? Or a chance to resume your life less than five years from now?”
“Why are you offering me this deal?”
“Because you’ll just make it all that much easier. However, if you wish, I’ll withdraw the offer. You washed several million dollars, and you personally made twenty percent off the top. You deuced your own people, and you made a fortune exploiting the message of your friends on your radio stations. In fact, you masterminded the whole scheme— sending squads to the West Coast to rob banks and armored cars, sending out wet boys to assassinate enemies. Those are facts we can prove.
“I can make a lot of hay out of you, Mr. Granger. Big businessman, banker, civic leader, guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, robbery, and so on. That’ll put a big dent in the public perception of the Sanctuary and other groups like it.”
“Is that what this is about? Public relations?”
“Public information. You’re not going to become folk heroes like Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde—you’re gangsters in camouflage suits. It’s important for the people to understand that.”
“And I’m the sacrificial lamb.”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Vail said. “I’m offering you a way out. You want the deal or not? Take it or leave it. Now.”
“What happens next?”
“You take it, we arrest you, read you your rights, book you in Missoula, and then take your statement, including a declaration that you were not coerced, that you rejected the right to maintain silence and are making an honest and truthful statement of your own volition.”
“Then what?”
“We put you in protective custody and arraign you.”
“For what?”
“I haven’t made up my mind on that yet. I’ll probably stick to the finances—cleaning robbery money, marketing stolen weapons. It will be an all-inclusive indictment. That means whatever we charge you with will exonerate you from all other felonies to that date. We’ll take everything you own in the deal, so the IRS’ll lose interest. Nothing to get, won’t be worth their while.”
Granger took out a cigar and rolled it between his thumbs and forefingers of his hands. He smelled it, closing his eyes almost in ecstasy at the odor. Then he carefully snipped off the end with a pair of small scissors and lit it. The ritual complete, he leaned back, took a deep drag, and blew the stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
“Cuban cigars,” he mused, almost to himself. “Fifty bucks apiece. Never dreamed when I was growing up picking tobacco in South Carolina that someday I’d be smoking fifty-dollar cigars, living in a house like this, flying my own plane right out of my backyard. So here I am, not much of a future either way I jump.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Vail said. “I think you might make three years in a minimum security lockup. You won’t last a month in the Grave. I’ve been there.”
“Obviously you have a very low opinion of my ability to survive.”
“Granger, you’re a businessman, not a zealot. You’re not even a good Christian. Fifteen years ago you c
ame up here, saw a chance to get rich, and took it. Now it’s pay-up time. Now… you looking for a bargain, or do you want to pay full price?”
“Hah. Excellent metaphor. Reduces it down to the simplest terms.”
“Yeah,” said Vail. “Life or a living death in the Grave. They don’t call it that to be funny.”
CHAPTER 37
MISSOULA AIRPORT, SATURDAY 4:15 P.M., MST
The Army had taken over a hangar at the airport and set up field headquarters. It was secured and heavily guarded. The airport had been evacuated, and Colonel Stu Rembrandt would direct the assault from the flight tower, which had been converted into a command post, taking his orders from Jesse James, who was in the war room at the White House with the President. Major Robert Barrier would set up a forward command post on the mountain, and Captain Larry Krantz would command the Ranger drop into the battle zone.
The hangar was filled with the most skilled Rangers in the Army, trained to fight effectively in any terrain and under the worst conditions. They were sitting on the concrete floor, leaning back against their packs, their faces already blackened.
Captain Krantz stood in front of an enormous map of the east face of Mount James and briefed the squads. The battle zone had been clearly defined. It appeared as a rectangle less than three miles wide at the bottom—a wide depression in the side of the mountain known as the saddle. Below the saddle, the mountain dropped straight down to its base. Above the saddle, the heavily forested area narrowed to a mile at the snow line a thousand feet from the peak. The north and south faces of Mount James were precipitous and barren, a no-man’s-land impossible to inhabit or protect.
A roaring stream sliced through the mountain, forming a narrow forested corridor between the battle zone and the south face. An unpaved road led up the side of Mount James to a small plateau perhaps the size of a football field. A wooden bridge spanned the narrow gorge formed by the swiftly running stream, connecting the plateau to the saddle. The plateau was bordered on the high side by heavy ridges that protected it from gunfire from the battle zone itself.
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