Masked Prey

by John Sandford

  Halfway back to Warrenton, he almost lost control on a curve, and saw that he’d gone into it at more than ninety miles an hour. If a cop stopped him, guns in the back . . .

  He forced himself to brake, bring his speed down to forty-five, and into town.

  He didn’t try to sleep that night. He sat watching a series of mindless old movies, because when he didn’t have a screen in front of him, he would see the moldering face of Rachel, rot and hanging flesh, coming for him in the dark.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Stepping back:

  Lucas flew back to Washington on Tuesday afternoon. From the Cincinnati airport, he called Chase one last time, told her everything he’d gotten from John Oxford, and said, “I think we’re on the wrong scent with the ANM. They may be odd, but their general . . . attitude . . . strikes me as inconsistent for the kind of group we’re looking for.”

  “Oxford could have been lying to you,” Chase said.

  “Remember, he wasn’t expecting me to show up. He was talking off the top of his head. If he’d been lying, I would have picked it up,” Lucas said. “He seemed more intent on growing a political philosophy than trying some kind of judo to get legislation passed or killed. I’m not saying that they might not have been involved in some killings, but they’d be individual actions, given the kind of group they are. For this 1919 thing, we’re looking for a smaller, crazier group. A few people, maybe. Not somebody trying to grow a political organization.”

  “Okay, as long as he puts out one of these so-called asks,” Chase said. “When will you get back?”

  “I’ll be at the Watergate by seven-thirty or so. What’s happening with your Aline investigation? You got anything more?”

  “It’s slow because we don’t want to tip him off,” Chase said. “Everything we’ve got so far seems innocuous. He carries a security clearance because of his military service and his current job and he had to go through a couple of background investigations to get it. He told an interviewer that he considered himself a libertarian but mostly voted Republican, didn’t like the Tea Party, and so on.”

  “No mention of the ANM.”

  “No. But then, he wasn’t asked. He was asked if he belonged to any groups that were on the State Department’s terrorist list, or advocated the overthrow of the United States government, and he said no. We’re looking at some of his financial records now, tax records, to see if anything’s going on there, but so far, everything looks clean.”

  * * *

  —

  ON THE FLIGHT BACK, only half of Lucas’s mind was looking for signs that the plane was breaking up and that he was about to die. With the other half, he thought about the whole presumed plan of the 1919 creators. Were they really looking for a killing? Or was something else going on?

  If the plot were carried out, if somebody took a shot at a senator’s child . . . how would the blackmailers get in touch with a senator they wished to influence? If phone books still existed, senators wouldn’t have been listed. He assumed that their private phone numbers would be highly guarded, or every political junkie in the country would be calling. What would 1919 do, phone a senatorial aide and ask that the threat be relayed? That obviously wouldn’t work—word of the threat would inevitably get out, making it impossible for the senator to comply. And no aide would give out the senator’s private number.

  Was it possible, he wondered, that the threat came from somebody who already had access to the senator’s private phone number? An insider? The big danger, he thought, was that some crazy would think that 1919 had it all worked out and would shoot a kid.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN THE PLANE UNEXPECTEDLY failed to crash at National, Lucas drove back to the Watergate, took a shower, got dinner, called Weather to chat, thumbed apathetically through the pile of FBI reports that he hadn’t yet read, and went to bed at one o’clock.

  At six the next morning, his phone rang and he groaned, picked up the phone, saw “Unknown” on the screen, and answered, “Davenport.”

  “This is the ANM guy,” a man said. “Do you have a pencil and paper?”

  “Give me a second,” Lucas said. He had recognized the voice as belonging to Thomas Aline. He found his notebook and pen. “Go ahead.”

  “To begin with, and please write this down . . . go fuck yourself.”

  “What?”

  “John Oxford put out a letter saying that he’d been compromised,” Aline said. “He and his cell are now out of the ANM. There won’t be any more contact between ANM members and John or any of his cell members. They’re out. Done. He spent his life organizing it and now he’s gone. So go fuck yourself.”

  “I didn’t make him do—”

  “Yeah, you did. Now. In accordance with an ask from John, before he removed himself from the organization, I have seven groups for you, and six leaders’ names. Patriotus, looks like fake Latin, but combines ‘patriot’ and ‘US.’ Roland Carr is the leader, maybe a dozen members. Forlorn Hope, Mark Stapler is the leader, maybe fifty to a hundred members, we’re not sure. White Fist, Toby Boone is the leader there. They’re organized and they’re dangerous, you gotta be careful if you go after them. Controlled Burn, we don’t know the leader or the numbers, but they’re basically a gang of parolees who got out of the federal penitentiary at Marion. Mostly career criminals but there’s an underlying political thing going on. We also have Lethal Edge, which combines white power ideas with knives and swords, Dominick Caruso is the leader, Italian name but old Southern background . . .”

  “What?”

  “I know, but two of their members were charged with killing a black guy with a rapier,” Aline said.

  “Jesus. Who else?”

  “The White Gazette, which is an underground online newspaper, compiled by a man named Jackson Wheatley and issued weekly, he’s a growing influence on the alt-right because it’s pretty well done. He apparently has a group of people working with him, but we don’t know who. And Pillars of Liberty, leader is Leopold Brooks, whose members follow and picket and harass members of Congress. And they’re good with cameras—they try for shots that make liberal politicians look bad, scratching their asses, picking their noses, and so on. Your problem seems to be over in that direction.”

  Lucas said, “Huh,” and remembered that Pillars of Liberty was one of the groups that might have been funded by Charles Lang.

  * * *

  —

  ALINE GAVE LUCAS a list of addresses for the six known leaders, four in Virginia, one in Delaware, and one in Maryland. “You have to go to your fed files for the other one.”

  “Is it a coincidence that they’re all so close to DC?” Lucas asked.

  “No. We mostly considered groups that would be active around the capital and have a history of violence or some other possible relationship to the 1919 website. Controlled Burn and White Fist are both prison-related groups, white gangs with a history of violence and extremist right-wing views. Forlorn Hope is weird, they’re gun guys, they’re believers in the ZOG, but they’re also involved with some of these anti-female groups, these incel groups, the involuntary celibates. . . .”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Aline said. “Some of the junk they publish is completely off the wall. They do like guns and have argued that rape is not necessarily a crime, but in some cases, is a natural right.”

  “Have they raped anybody? For real?”

  “Rumor says yes. We don’t know of any actual cases. Anyway, they’re nuts and supposedly heavily armed. Gotta be careful there. Patriotus, not so much guns, but they have talked about ways to force Congress to vote their platform, which involves shipping blacks back to Africa, Hispanics back across the border, and gays to prison camps where they’d be reoriented to heterosexuality. They could have come up with something like 1919—it fits some of their ideas. They might be the lead
ing contender for putting up the website, but if somebody gets shot, the shooter would probably be a lone wolf. Lone wolves are admired, but not usually part of a group. Some of us think 1919 is an advertisement for a guy like that. Timothy McVeigh, the guy who did the Oklahoma City bombing, was a classic lone wolf and much admired by these guys.”

  “That’s encouraging,” Lucas said. “That they have a role model.”

  “You wanted nuts, they’re nuts. I’m going now. No point in trying to track this phone, it’s a very old untraceable burner and I’m throwing it out the car window,” Aline said. “Oh, and don’t forget. Go fuck yourself.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS WENT BACK TO BED; woke again at eight o’clock and called Jane Chase and told her what Aline had given him and that Old John supposedly was no longer a member of ANM.

  “If it’s true, that’s a tough group,” Chase said. “I’ll have our HVE guys look at the names you got from Aline and I’ll tell everybody to lay low on Aline. If Old John is gone, Aline could be a key to finding out who else is involved with ANM.”

  “What’s, uh, HVE?”

  “Homegrown Violent Extremists,” Chase said. “The new flavor of the day. I’ll get back to you on the other groups.”

  “And soon? If you don’t give me something to do pretty quick, I’ll have to go bowling.”

  “Not a fate worse than death, dude. But don’t do that. Go eat breakfast, I’ll have some preliminary stuff on its way before you get through your Wheaties, so you can keep working.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS TECHNICALLY WORKED for a Marshals Service bureaucrat named Russell Forte, who had an office across the Potomac in Virginia. Lucas called and told him about the ANM and about the extremist groups named by Aline.

  “If I’m going to be sticking my nose into those hornets’ nests,” Lucas said, “I’ll need some backup. Marshal backup. The FBI seems okay to me, but what I really need is . . .”

  “Bob and Rae,” Forte said.

  “You think that’s possible? On short notice?”

  “I’ll check and get back to you. You want them on a plane today?”

  “If they want in,” Lucas said. “I don’t think I’ll need them for more than a week, at the outside. If something hasn’t happened by then, then probably nothing will.”

  * * *

  —

  BOB MATEES AND RAE GIVENS were members of the Marshals Service Special Operations Group (SOG) based at the group’s headquarters in Louisiana. They specialized in finding and arresting hard-core fugitives, kicking doors and taking names.

  Rae called Lucas a half hour after he talked to Forte, as he was getting dressed. “Is it something interesting?” she asked.

  “Yeah. It’s also somewhat classified at the moment, but basically, we’ll be talking to some prison gang members and some other heavily armed fruitcakes. It’s no harm, no foul—if they talk, we walk away. We’re not there to arrest anyone, at this point.”

  “That’s no fun,” she said.

  “Could get to be fun, though. You want in, or not?” Lucas asked.

  “Oh, yeah. We want in, because we know you. Sooner or later, there’ll be our kind of trouble,” Rae said. “We’re going through a training sequence with some new guys, but there are other people here who can pick up the slack. Bob is already headed back to his house to load up his gear and kiss his sweetie goodbye.”

  “And you’ll be doing the same?”

  “We’ll talk about that when we get there,” she said.

  Lucas: “Oh-oh.”

  “Yeah, but it was inevitable. Sandro’s already there in DC and I ain’t going with.” Rae had been involved with an FBI agent named Sandro Tremanty.

  “Maybe you could have lunch . . .”

  “Nope. I’ve still got feelings for him, but we’re done. He’s basically political, and he’ll be a big shot. Having a tall black gunslinger chick hanging around won’t help him with that. He sorta wanted both, the politics and the gunslinger, but I had the feeling that if he was forced to pick, he’d go with DC. So, I let him go.”

  “I’m sorry, Rae.”

  “I’ll get over it. And I’ll see you tonight, if Forte keeps his promise on the plane tickets. He’s thinking two o’clock out of News Orleans. If that works, we should be there in time for you to buy us dinner.”

  “Bring your guns.”

  “We don’t leave home without ’em.”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN HE HAD FINISHED DRESSING, Lucas called Charlie Lang and said, “I need whatever you have on Patriotus, Forlorn Hope, White Fist, Controlled Burn, Lethal Edge, and on the White Gazette.” He omitted Pillars of Liberty from the list, because if Lang was their major source of funding, he’d warn them.

  “I’ve heard of all those groups, but we wouldn’t have much in our files—with the exception of White Fist and the White Gazette, they’re all small and insignificant,” Lang said, in his oily voice. “That said, that’s a good list—they’re exactly what you’re looking for. I’ll have Stephen pull together what we do have in our files and send it to you. And, I’ll have him make some calls. We have some sources who would know those people.”

  “Excellent. I need it soon.”

  “Of course you do. Now, do you have anything for me?”

  Lucas thought for a moment, then said, “I talked to Old John.”

  “No! You found him!”

  “I’ve been told, by another ANM source, that John told the other members of ANM that he’d been compromised and his cell has now pulled out of ANM. No other cells will remain in touch with him. He’s out.”

  “Fascinating,” Lang said. “If you could give me his real name . . .”

  “I can’t do that. I could call him and ask if he’d call you. I have no problem doing that, and I think he might be interested in talking about his ideas . . . in a general way.”

  “I will wait by my phone.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS WENT DOWN to the restaurant for breakfast, and when he’d returned to his room and brought up his laptop, he found another group of encrypted files from Jane Chase. He opened them and found a note from her, along with files on each of the groups named by Aline.

  In the note, Chase said that Controlled Burn, a prison-linked group, had been run by a man named Sawyer Loan, who was currently locked up in a hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He and another member of the group had gone into a Chattanooga liquor store with guns and got all shot up themselves. Loan was hit four times, and his partner, Daniel McCutcheon, had been killed.

  In her note, she said that McCutcheon had been shot seven times, three times while he was already lying on the floor, wounded, because the liquor store employees “wanted to make a point,” which they had. Loan, she said, probably wouldn’t stand trial in Tennessee, since he was out on parole and liquor store holdups were not an approved parolee activity. He’d be going back to a federal prison for at least another six years.

  She added that Loan had not been so much a leader, as a phone number for the other members of the group. The Virginia state police believed his replacement was his girlfriend, Tabitha Calvin, who lived in a place called Goochland, Virginia.

  Lucas looked up Goochland on Google Maps, and found it to be a bit more than a hundred miles and a couple of hours by car from Washington.

  * * *

  —

  HE LOOKED THROUGH THE OTHER FILES. All six of the other groups, and their leaders, were closer than Goochland, and seemed to be bigger threats. Goochland, on the other hand, was out a ways, but he could be there and back before Bob and Rae got to Washington. If the Virginia state police were correct, he only had to deal with a girlfriend.

  He checked his watch: 9:30. If he hurried, he could be in Goochland by noon, back before fiv
e. He hurried.

  * * *

  —

  GETTING OUT OF WASHINGTON was a hassle, twenty minutes to the Potomac after he got stuck behind a moving van that was jammed up in a corner, but once on I-95, he began to roll. The landscape was like neither Minnesota nor the Cincinnati area—it was green, but if it wasn’t industrial or commercial, it was forested, with relatively few farms visible from the highway. The route took him almost into Richmond, then swerved west on I-64, and from there cross-country into Goochland.

  Goochland was an odd small town, because it was small, but it also apparently was the county seat. Lucas hadn’t done any research on the place, having simply poked Tabitha Calvin’s address into his phone’s navigation app.

  Once in town, he spotted a clutch of red-brick buildings with cop cars in the parking lot. He slowed and turned in and found he was at the Goochland County Sheriff’s Office. A deputy was walking out to his car and Lucas grabbed him, showed him his ID. The deputy frowned at the Cadillac, and said, “Marshals are living high on the hog, huh?”

  “I’m paying for it myself,” Lucas lied. “I got shot a few months back and I need the cushion of a big car.”

  “Yeah? C’mon, I’ll introduce you to the sheriff, he’s having lunch,” the deputy said. “Where’d you get shot?”