by John Cutter
“What about Bellator, sir?” Mac asked.
“Once you have this woman in the cell, tell Gunny to have Bellator brought in and taken into custody. Gunny had better get a lot of help to do that. You go with him. Only shoot Bellator if necessary.”
“Suppose Bellator left the base?”
“Then take some men, find him, and kill him — as discreetly as possible. We can take no chances…”
*
It was all there, in a set of emails to six correspondents. The dark web isn’t always so dark.
The plans for the attack, discussed with the handful of men allowed to know.
There was more — Gustafson had sent an email to a source in Russia, advising him that he may need exfiltration. Professor Gustafson assured the source that the SVR would not have to support him once he was in Russia. He had most of his money in a Swiss bank account.
Did that mean Gustafson was a Russian agent?
But as he read on, it sounded as if the Russians were more like Gustafson’s allies. There were strong white nationalist undercurrents in Russia, all tangled with a hyper-right-wing version of Russian Orthodox Christianity. Still, Russian intelligence services were always delighted at any domestic terrorism chaos in the USA. They were happy to help…
The attack was laid out in one email with “FOR YOUR EYES ONLY” in the subject line. It was to take place in less than twenty-four hours.
Nine-thirty tomorrow morning.
Six cadres of Germanic Brethren from around the country were already in the D.C. area. There were twenty men in each cadre, a hundred twenty total. They would come in six trucks — trucks rebuilt from junkyard vehicles, with false license plates — and converge on the senatorial event at the Lincoln Memorial.
Three other attacks, with individual operatives, were to take place shortly before the big one — an attack on the Joint Chiefs, a suicide bomber attack at a central police station, and an attack on a site to be decided at the last moment. All three men to draw police presence away from the main attack.
Vince pored over the emails again and again and found no clues to the third decoy attack.
He looked to see if he’d gotten a reply from the email he’d sent to the FBI agent.
Nope.
He remembered Gustafson’s references to having someone inside the system. What if—
“Would you like another beer?” came a chirpy voice at his elbow.
Startled, he looked up to see the pretty black-haired waitress smiling at him. He thought he saw an invitation in her eyes for something more than beer.
Vince wished he could put it all aside and say yes to that question in her eyes. Just get lost in her arms and forget who he was and what he had to do.
But he said, “I’ll have a cup of coffee and a cheeseburger with everything you can possibly put on it.” He smiled at her. “Got work to do — and I won’t have time for dinner…”
*
“Your simple mistake, right now, Agent Corlin, is that you think someone’s going to get you out of this,” Gustafson said.
He was standing near the door of the cell, looking frankly, even pityingly, at her. Mac Colls was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching Corlin. She was sitting on her bunk, in a corner, her drawn-up knees clasped by her arms. She had a brave face but her body language said she was scared.
Mac wondered when they’d start actual physical pressure in the interrogation process. To him it seemed obvious that all this talk wasn’t going to work. The water treatment was a better move. Or just beat the crap out of her for an hour or so. She was a traitor to her race — she deserved it.
“But you see, Agent Corlin,” said Gustafson, “we’ve got friends in the Justice Department. They’re more than friends. We also have them in Defense. The Brethren are more highly placed than you realize. At this point, several persons whom you were in contact with have been detained. Any calls about attacks on Washington in the next twenty-four hours will be blocked from going up the chain of command. It’s all been arranged. It doesn’t matter what Bellator tells people — he does not appear to be a federal agent. He has no standing. False warnings about attacks happen every day, you know. Anything he says will be dismissed.”
“And we’ll have him dead and in the ground in an hour or two,” Mac said.
Gustafson raised his hand for quiet. “Miss Corlin — it’s time for you to answer our questions. How much did you find out about our plans?”
“I tried very hard — and found out very little,” she said, shrugging. “I heard the term Operation Firepower — but no sense of where and when and what it is exactly.”
Gustafson snorted. “I think you’re lying. We’re going to have to get rough with you fairly soon. I have matters to arrange, but I shall be back and I will have my questions answered.”
“You think you’re not going to be in jail after all this?” she asked. “Really? Are you megalomaniacal enough to be that much in denial?”
“Do not mistake a deep-seated sense of duty to my own people for megalomania. As for denial — I know the risks. I have my own… preparations.” He gave her a wry smile. “No need to be concerned for my sake.”
“These people in government who are supposedly protecting you — they must be low level.”
He shook his head. “You’re not going to draw me out that way.”
She shrugged. “What can they hope to gain, I wonder? An attack will just make the nation more fully prepared to take your kind down.”
“This attack will be a signal for true patriots to arise from many places. Including the United States military… and the nation’s police departments.”
“I doubt it. The ‘Big Boogaloo’ won’t happen. You’re deluded, Gustafson — and you’ll be taking people like poor Mac Colls here down with you.”
“Let me deal with her,” Mac said, seething at her condescension toward him.
“Oh, you’ll have your chance if she doesn’t cooperate,” Gustafson said. “We’ll start with a form of torture you can survive — and move on from there. It’s a shame — she could be exchanged for one of our people, perhaps, at some later date, were she to cooperate. But with this kind of resistance — I doubt she’ll survive the interrogation.”
He turned and went through the door. Mac threw a final contemptuous glance at Corlin, then followed Gustafson. He turned the key in the lock and glanced through the small barred window in the door. She waved at him cheerfully, then lay back on the cot, hands behind her head, smiling.
It’s all an act, he told himself, turning angrily away. I’ll remember that sneering smile — when she’s screaming.
*
Vince rode up to the base of the rock formation, south of the Wolf Base. He switched off the bike and pushed it to a sheltered place between two boulders.
Then he went to stand on the edge of the cliff at the foot of the formation. He was wearing jeans, his own Rangers boots, a t-shirt, and his brown leather jacket. Around his hips was the army-surplus belt he’d taken from the Brethren, which held the holsters for his knife and pistol. On his back was the small pack, containing a flashlight, two bottles of water and an energy bar bought at a gas station, and sixty rounds of .50 Action Express ammunition.
He was looking north, at the ridge, the escarpment containing the Brethren’s bunker complex.
He’d spent two hours poring over maps and Google satellite images of the region around Stonewall and the Wolf Base, and it was dusk when he rode up to Sullivan Rock. The rock formation, part of the National Forest, reminded some people of a soldier facing the world from a high ridge. Carved by nature in sandstone, it reared gray-red over a shallow valley, across from the ridge containing the underground bunker complex. Wolf Base was almost two miles off, blurred by autumn mist and the smoke drifting in from fireplace chimneys around Stonewall.
Optimum tactics required Vince to make his approach from above the base. There were no clear-cut overland approaches he could take to the ridgetop on a
motorcycle. The creviced northern end of the ridge was open ground, with no cover, and there were security cameras watching it. Assuming the sheer cliff would prevent intruders from the east, Gustafson had set up no security cams looking toward the back of the base.
Vince had hoped to hear police sirens by now. He’d left messages with a tip line at the FBI — he’d been unable to get through to an agent — and he’d sent a number of emails. He’d even filled out tip forms online. He had thought about calling the Sheriff — but Shaun had said Woodbridge was friendly with Gustafson and he’d been seen at Wolf Base more than once. He couldn’t be trusted.
Vince had thought about the State Police, too — but they’d just send a patrol car who’d ask around at the base if there was an Agent Corlin there. They would get a puzzled “no”. And they wouldn’t obtain a search warrant on his say-so. Not today.
Until the FBI got off the dime, he was going to have to handle this himself.
And he was going to have to walk there to do it…
He looked at the sky. There was a thin cloud cover; a nearly full moon was rising at the horizon.
Armed with the Desert Eagle and a knife, Vince started down the hillside, following a path that looked like it had been made by a mountain goat — it probably had. He was soon skidding down between stunted trees, catching hold of a branch now and then to keep from plunging headlong down the steep slope.
A few minutes later he came to an outcropping of granite, climbed down it, then descended along a zig-zag trail to the valley floor.
Vince started across, heading for the eastern side of the ridge. This was going to take a while… and the shadows were growing long.
Passing through several meadows of ferns ringed by pines, he came to a stream that ran south behind the Wolf Base ridge. A thin, intermittent hunter’s trail ran alongside the stream. He followed the spotty trail alongside the gurgling stream. When the trail vanished into thick underbrush, he found a way around atop the boulders edging the creek. Mosquitoes were out in clouds, here, swarming in the twilight. He climbed down to a muddy bank of the stream and smeared mud on his face, neck and hands. It would be a help blending into the night and it’d keep the mosquitoes to a minimum.
He trudged on, as the darkness thickened around him. In the thin moonlight he could see silhouettes of branches in his way and the lineaments of the rocky, irregular trail.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed as he traipsed north, but it felt like two hours when the tree cover broke up, opened by an ancient fall of rocks now half imbedded in the earth. The back of the rocky escarpment rose before him, twice as high as the highest tree in the woods.
He had done a lot of rock climbing and cliff scaling with the Rangers, and Vince thought he could probably find a way up the escarpment. But it occurred to him, looking up, that he might have been overconfident. A lot of this looked sheer. And it was damp out. The rocks could be slippery. It was getting dark and he had no climbing gear. He was going to have to free-climb.
Vince didn’t like the odds. But he was committed now.
He took off his backpack, methodically ate the energy bar, and drank half a bottle of water, all the while looking at the cliffside for the best climbing route. He got his small flashlight from the pack, put the pack back on, and used the flashlight to work his way across the craggy fallen boulders toward the foot of the cliff.
A bat fluttered overhead, and crickets sawed at the air with their calls. Still no sirens.
Jumping from rock to rock, Vince reached the debris of stone and desiccated wood at the base of the cliff. He climbed the pile of debris to the cliff face and found the long vertical crack he’d spotted at the corner of the escarpment. He looked it over for a few seconds, using the flashlight where it was hard to make out. Then he put the flashlight in a coat pocket and started to climb…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Agent Deirdre Corlin raised her dripping head from the aluminum washtub. She managed to keep that annoying, flinty expression on her face, Mac noticed.
French still had his hand on the back of her neck. Her hands were plastic-cuffed behind her.
“Well, agent?” said Mac. “You want to go through that until you croak, or do you want to tell us?”
“I did tell you,” Agent Corlin said, coughing. “I only found out the name. I tried to get people to talk about it but the General was too careful about need-to-know. And locking doors.”
“You were going to report something — I heard you say so. What was it?”
“Just that there were some night drills.” She coughed again. “Which suggested it might happen at night.”
“That wasn’t what you were talking about in the library. I heard you! It was something urgent!”
“I was thinking of asking to transfer out of the mission. That was urgent for me. I was fed up feeding and caring for ignorant, brainwashed scumbags.”
French snarled at that. Not waiting for Mac’s order, he shoved her head back under the water. She squirmed and fought, trying to straighten up.
“Let her up,” he said.
“She’s a—”
“Let her up!”
“Well, shit, Mac.” French let her straighten up. She gasped and coughed as he went on. “We’re not going to get anywhere that way. You got to take her right to the edge. It’s panic that does it. I saw it on a Tv show.”
“You’re wasting your energy,” she sputtered. She coughed up water and said, hoarsely, “Should be deciding how to turn yourself in. Get the best deal.”
“Oh the hell with this…” French muttered. He stood up and unbuckled his pants. “I’m gonna take some of the high and mighty out of her.” He unzipped his pants—
And she twisted herself to the right and kicked back at him, driving the heel of her right foot up into French’s crotch, straight into his balls.
French squealed with pain — a funny sound to come out of so big a man — and Mac had to smile. “She did you a good—”
Mac didn’t get the rest out because she kicked him in the solar plexus. He gasped and stepped quickly back, wheezing.
“Bitch, I’m gonna kick her ass for this,” French said, his voice still high.
Then came the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door opened and Gustafson came in, carrying a short coil of rope. “What the devil are you doing with your pants open like that, French?” he demanded.
“Sir,” French said. “She was being so uppity — she kicked me in the nuts—”
“Then I won’t have to! Zip up your pants and get out of the way. Sergeant, take this.” Gustafson tossed Colls the rope. “Tie that to her wrists and run the other end through the bars in the door.”
Still getting his breath, Mac did as he was ordered — French had to hold the squirming agent down so he could tie the rope on.
Gustafson nodded. “Fine. Now hoist her up.”
French pulled the rope hand-over-hand so that she was lifted to her tiptoes by the knot around her wrists, pulling her arms into a brutally unnatural position. She groaned, and clenched her eyes shut.
“French, tie the other end to the cot.” The metal legs of the cots were bolted to the floor. French tied the rope to a steel leg, making sure the rope was taut.
“Okay, we leave her there for a while,” said Gustafson. “Unless you have some fresh information for us, Miss Corlin?”
“Fuck you, assholes!” grated Agent Corlin.
“I see. Come on, men. We’ll lock the door and leave her dangling from it. We have a planning session to go to in the conference room… Back in an hour, perhaps, Miss Corlin.”
“Don’t bother!” she shouted hoarsely.
She moaned in pain when they swung the door closed.
*
The wind rose, trying to push Vince off the escarpment. It soughed off the stone and spattered him with intermittent rain.
And he was stuck.
Vince had gotten himself boxed into a corner, hundreds of feet over the foot of the cliff.
The darkness had fooled him. When he got to the lip of the cliff, at the top of the crack he’d been using for footholds, he found a boulder beetled over him, right in his way. It was jutting out too far for him to reach over. If he tried, he’d fall.
Now what?
He held on with his left hand and his feet and reached into his coat with his right hand, tugging out the flashlight. He switched on the light and shone it at the rockfaces to the left and right of him. To the left it was sheer. Not a handhold in sight. To the right — the same.
But when he tried again over to the right, moving the light more slowly, the oblong glow of the light played over a recess in the rock, almost within reach. If he could grab it with his right hand, maybe it’d hold him long enough so that he could grab the upper edge of the cliff with his left, where the cliff’s lip was flatter. But that would require lunging for that recess. There was a very good chance he wouldn’t be able to hold on even if he caught it.
He could climb back down and try to find another route. But what was happening to Deirdre Corlin, meanwhile?
You’re a Ranger, he told himself. Focus, and bring all of your attention to this, and you can do it.
Vince took a deep breath, leaned in as close to the rock wall as he could, memorizing the exact position of that recess. He flicked the flashlight off, slipped it in his pocket, stretched out his right arm — and lunged at the handhold.
He slapped his right hand down into it — and felt the water coating it, his fingers slipping…
He clapped his left hand down on the upper lip of the cliff… and it caught a rocky knob. His right slipped from the recess and he fell with a jerk to the end of his left arm…
He ground his teeth with pain and thrashed with his right hand at the recess. He felt for a foothold and the toe of his right boot caught a tiny ledge. It held his weight and he was able to lift up half an inch and slap his right hand into the recess. He did a crooked pull-up, feeling close to tearing a muscle. There was a roaring in his ears. The wind tugged at him — then he slapped at the lip of the cliff with his right hand, and caught hold. Now he could do a regulation pull-up. He grunted, feeling the gravitational pull of the world dragging at him like a living thing as he pulled himself up to the edge.
