Firepower

by John Cutter

  Dutch reached out and turned on the radio. “…earlier reports of two hundred domestic terrorists killed at the Lincoln Memorial were false. DCPD has just given us a count on eighty-eight killed, twelve seriously wounded, fourteen arrested unhurt or with non-life-threatening injuries. Police believe six others may have escaped. Seven people, targeted by the terrorists, are dead as a result of the terrorist attack, including one police officer, with eight more hospitalized… The vigilante who used a machine gun to stop the attack has been tentatively identified as—”

  “That sure was a helluva thing,” Vince said, hoping to cover up the mention of his name. He had given his name to Dutch as Vince. There were a lot of Vincents around. But the media would probably mention his background, including the Rangers. “I heard a report on someone’s laptop, the guy sitting next to me on the bus. Lot of those American Nazis killed, all at once. Wild.”

  “Yeah, it was that.”

  The radio news segment ended, replaced by a country singer, something about trucks.

  Dutch was frowning now, as if puzzling. But he said, “Hell, I don’t think anybody but their mamas will miss them Nazi assholes. But it’s sure too bad that fella couldn’t have told somebody, they could have called that thing off. Then no innocents would’ve gotten killed.”

  Vince nodded dourly. “Yeah. It’s too bad.” He shrugged. “I understand he and an FBI agent tried. There was a lot of confusion. No one was listening. I heard.”

  Dutch glanced at him, still looking bemused. “You said you were coming from the D.C. area?”

  “Alexandria.”

  “And you’re headed to Wersted? You got family there?”

  “No, some business to finish.”

  Dutch nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know why anybody’d go to that town unless they have to. Lot of crooks there. Russian mafia came in, bought up the town. It’s mostly whorehouses and crooked gambling now.” He hesitated, then said, “I hope that doesn’t offend you. Maybe you got work there. Friends and stuff.”

  “Nope, no friends there. Only work I have there is… unpaid. Just some old business to take care of. I hope to be in and out the same day.”

  “Well, I can get you close…”

  They drove on, slowing for small towns, stopping for diesel once. Vince got a cup of coffee from the little convenience store at the gas station and heard people discussing the terror attack in Washington. It was big national news, and his name was out there, now. He wondered if he should turn himself in — if he survived his visit to Wersted. When the other shoppers glanced at him, he turned away, not sure if his picture was on the news yet.

  He climbed back up into the Kenworth tractor-cab beside Dutch, and they headed out. Two hours more and they stopped for lunch in a West Virginia mountain town — Vince never did catch the name of it.

  They ate lunch, Vince insisting on paying — he had more than enough cash on him — and they exchanged stories about service in Iraq.

  Afterwards Vince went to a convenience store and bought a burner phone. Dutch was using the restaurant bathroom, so Vince went to the tractor-cab and sat on the mounting step under the door on the passenger side, thinking about Deirdre and the people Gustafson’s followers had managed to kill. Would he get to Gustafson in time?

  And what about Rose Destry and Bobby? Were they safe? Maybe it was time to call them. He set up the burner phone, used it to call Rose Destry.

  “Vincent!” she said. “I almost didn’t answer because it gave no number!”

  “It’s a burner phone, Rose. Where are you?”

  “We’re up in Connecticut. I’ve got some family up here.”

  “Did Bobby find the motorcycle where I left it? Still there?”

  “Yes, this time of year people don’t go up to Sullivan Rock. He found it and put it in the truck, brought it to the cabin. But it’s yours, Vince. We want you to have it.”

  “Someday I’ll take you up on that. Can I talk to him?”

  “Sure. Listen, Vince — thank you for bringing my boy home.”

  “My pleasure, Rose.”

  Bobby came on the line. “Vince! Hey, man! I got a call from Shaun!”

  “He’s okay?”

  “Yeah — he’s testifying. They put him up in a nice hotel. He’s turning evidence against the Brethren. They’re gonna have to hide him somewhere afterwards…”

  Vince heard Dutch coming back to the truck, going around to the other side. “Listen — I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch sometime.”

  “Vince — you keeping your head down?”

  “Always. Take care of your mom for me.”

  He hung up, put the phone in his coat — and then sat listening to the voices coming from the other side of the truck.

  “I saw how much money you had in that wallet when you bought them snacks, man.” A reedy male voice. Maybe a guy in his twenties. “You give me the money and you drive away and no one needs to get hurt. This gun’s got hollow-point bullets. They’ll fuck you up.”

  “Fuck you and your junkie friend,” Dutch said.

  Vince had left his pack locked in the truck. With his gun and knife in it. He shrugged and got up, walked around the front of the Kenworth.

  He found two young men bracing Dutch who stood with his back to the tractor-cab. One of them was acned with long, greasy blond hair; the other, his face gaunt and pitted, had his head shorn. Both were skinny, dressed in baggy pants and t-shirts and open plaid shirts. Their eyes were sunken and the urgency in their body language said opiate addicts. Probably oxy heads; hillbilly heroin. The one with the greasy blond hair had a 9mm pistol in his hand.

  The junky with the lank blond hair was saying, “You know what, ‘Red’, I can shoot you, and take your wallet, and drive off with your fucking truck and maybe sell whatever’s in it, how’d that be?”

  Striding toward them Vince said sharply, “Hey — point that at me!”

  Startled, the gunman turned to Vince who was already stepping in, left hand gripping the gun barrel, pointing it up at the sky; his right pistoning out to rabbit-punch the junkie in the jaw. He felt bones break.

  Vince jerked the gun from the junkie’s hand and cracked him over the head with it, at the same time turning sideways to evade a slash from a buck knife wielded by the bald one. The first junky was folding over, out cold as Vince sank his fist in the second junkie’s brisket. The bald guy doubled over and Vince cracked him over the head with the gun. He fell beside his friend.

  Then, he and Dutch stood there a minute, contemplating the two men sprawled on the asphalt. “Well you sure didn’t give me much to do, dammit, Vince,” Dutch said, shaking his head.

  Vince opened the pistol. There were three bullets in it. “Down to their last three bullets. But he could’ve killed you with them. The mystery is, how’d a couple of junkies not sell their gun to get their shit?”

  “That would’ve happened sooner or later, if they lived long enough. I guess we should call the police?”

  “You know what, let’s not bother. Staties or the sheriff might keep us here for a week dealing with it.”

  “You got that right.”

  “We’ll dump their weapons in the first river we see. Meanwhile…” He looked around, seeing that no one was watching. The semitruck blocked them from the view of the restaurant and store. “Let’s drag these knuckleheads over there and drop them in that dumpster. They can figure out their lives from there…”

  That’s what they did. The two men were waking up, groaning when they were dumped in the big trash dumpster.

  Without looking back, Vince and Dutch returned to the truck and got under way. They’d just slowed on a bridge over a river so Vince could toss the junkies’ weapons over the railing, when Dutch said, “You were pretty quick to say we’d best leave the cops out of it. I guess I wasn’t surprised.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” Vince asked, rolling the window back up as the truck picked up speed.

  “I wasn’t sure till I saw you handle those two. A
Ranger, sure, but that kind of efficiency — Lord!” He shook his head. “And you fit the description. I saw it on my phone when you were in that store. A former Army Ranger name of Vincent coming out of the D.C. area… You got money but for some reason you’re hitching a ride. And — I could feel something was up. You’re him.”

  “Okay,” Vince said with a shrug. “That worry you?”

  “Nope! Hell, you just saved my ass. And anyway — me and you are on the same side…” Dutch took his cell phone from a shirt pocket and passed it to him. “Turn that on, there.”

  Vince did. The phone showed a photograph of a smiling black woman, about thirty-five. She looked shy but happy.

  “That’s my girlfriend — my Shanna. Fuck them Nazis anyway.”

  *

  Gustafson was pacing back and forth in the den of the Gustafson house, waiting for Dunsmuir to get back to him. Dunsmuir was to take him in the yacht, The Spirit of Purity, to the Cayman Islands, well away from the untidy aftermath of Operation Firepower. Normally he’d have flown there in the helicopter but that vile, treacherous thief Bellator had stolen it. Dunsmuir, Gustafson’s hired yacht coxswain, was one of the Brethren and surely he must get back in touch soon. Or had the news from Washington sent him into hiding?

  A log fire was burning in the massive gray stone fireplace; the rain was pattering on the windows. The place was cozy, with books and leathern chairs. A stein of German beer was going flat on the big oaken desk.

  Yet Gustafson wanted badly to be away from this “safe house”. The Russians had not confirmed that they would pick him up in the Caymans and take him to the dacha on the Black Sea as they’d promised, and many of the surviving Brethren were not returning his calls. A few from Wolf Base were said to be cooperating with the FBI. And certainly, that other treasonous worm Shaun Adler was spilling his guts, telling many a tale to the feds. Ostrovsky claimed that the safe house was entirely unknown to the Bureau — even to Dawson — and he was quite safe here. But Adler may have reported the whereabouts of the place.

  A chilling thought came to him. Could Adler be in touch with… Bellator?

  Still, Gustafson had some very capable men here, protecting him: Chaz Prosser, Henry Spellman, Dusty Folkson, Gunny Hansen, and two others. They were alert, well-armed, and this house was nearly a fortress in itself.

  If only Dunsmuir would call him back…

  He was troubled, his nerves jumping. Gustafson walked to the desk, picked up the stein, then put it down, the beer untasted.

  The Operation. One attack had not carried out at all — the men lost their nerve; the suicide bomb never detonated, Flesky wounded and blathering to the feds, Adler escaped and cooperating with the FBI, Colls killed before he could carry out the Joint Chiefs attack. Buster killed. Then the slaughter of the Brethren at the Lincoln Memorial.

  Gustafson went back and forth in his mind over whether he had achieved anything. They had killed a handful of the crowd. True, none of the senators had been killed — though they had been targeted. And almost all the Brethren had died or surrendered themselves. The Russians were satisfied — they didn’t care who won or lost as long as there was more social chaos, disruptive violence and terror fomented within America.

  But what was his next move? Perhaps the Sacred Cause would consider the dead Brethren to be martyrs. Certainly, when he regrouped with his people, in time, the next operation would be devastating to the liberals and Jews and their black minions…

  A knock on the door. “Mr. Gustafson?”

  It was Polly, with his dinner probably. “Yes, Polly?”

  “Mr. Ostrovsky would like to speak to you!”

  “Well — can he not come to me? I’m awaiting a very important call.”

  Ostrovsky came. He was wearing an old-fashioned scarlet smoking jacket, with yellow lapels, an ascot, tweed trousers, and slippers. He was smoking a Gauloises cigarette, which annoyed Gustafson. Though his own fortune derived from tobacco, he disliked second-hand smoke. A tall, pallid, bony gentleman of seventy with strangely red lips and deep-sunk rheumy blue eyes, Pieter Ostrovsky was a somewhat ghostly presence who engaged in long silences and sudden announcements.

  It was his time for a sudden announcement. “Raoul, I’m afraid you must depart this very night,” he said in his soft Russian accent.

  “What? My boat is not yet confirmed…”

  “I’m sure your man will confirm. If not, you can hire someone else. Go quickly to your yacht at Charleston.”

  “I need Dunsmuir to take the yacht out and I will take a separate boat out to it. Federal agents may be watching it.”

  “Your man Dawson surely is protecting you?”

  “The Attorney General has taken a ‘leave of absence’ this morning. He is expected to resign. Too much has come out… He cannot help me.”

  “All the more reason you must depart. You have your men; you have your Humvee. I am not equipped to protect you any further; indeed, I am ordered not to. You know, this was supposed to be my retirement, supervising this house. I did not expect anything so… well, they did not tell me what to expect. But I have been informed that this Shaun Adler has told them about this very house. You must leave, almost immediately, and I must leave the instant my chauffeur arrives. Pack what you have, tell your men, and depart. I must insist. You would not want to anger the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki. There will be just time for a cold collation in the kitchen. Sliced beef, bread, and cheese, with coffee. Please prepare yourself.”

  With that he blew a plume of smoke into the room and turned away, leaving Gustafson staring after him, open-mouthed.

  *

  Vincent Bellator strode along, under the cloud-wracked night sky, the asphalt of Greenville Road. He wore the service belt with its holstered Desert Eagle, the sheathed knife, the SWIR night-seeing goggles, a frag grenade, and two flashbangs.

  It was about 8:00 p.m. He had been walking for two miles, heading west from Wersted, West Virginia. Dutch had taken him all the way to Wersted and he’d offered to drive him out to the Ostrovsky house, but Vince didn’t want to put him in danger.

  Vince had few friends still living, and he didn’t want to lose another.

  Greenville Road was gradually curving up a slope through a forest of spruce intermixed with hemlock in the foothills of the Adirondacks. Vince had seen not one vehicle on the road. Bats had flitted from the woods on either side, and an owl had called out, and he thought he’d seen the eyes of a bobcat glowing golden-green from a tree limb. But so far, except for a 747 droning high overhead, no sign of humanity.

  But after another quarter mile he saw lights glimmering through the trees up ahead. One of them seemed to be headlights.

  Vince stepped off the road, walked along the gravel siding close to the trees, ready to slip under cover.

  He hurried now, jogging up the hill, one hand plucking the goggles up, putting them on. He kept the lenses flipped up for now. There was some light from the full moon and the occasional spangle of stars showing through the clouds.

  Soon the road curved sharply to the north, dead-ending about a hundred feet in a short steel barrier. Vince stopped just before a gravel driveway, which headed west between a big overhanging oak and a group of beeches. It circled up beside a hulking gray-stone house. Looking through a tangle of shrubs and lowering tree branches, he could see the arching front entrance of the house, and a group of men, two of them loading luggage into the back of a black Humvee, probably the one that he’d seen driving away from Wolf Base.

  There was a light fixture shining over the doorway, but he couldn’t see the men clearly from here, mostly just their silhouettes. He could see the profiles of assault rifles on straps over the shoulders of three of the men.

  There was another car there too, long and low, closer to the road — it was a limousine and its headlights were on. A tall, thin man, accompanied by a woman, hurried to the limo. No one opened the door for them. The tall man opened the back door, let the woman get in, then he slid in after her.
The moment the door shut, the limousine started moving. The passenger side window was open and as Vince stepped into the shadowy brush, watching the limo drive by, he saw the tall man’s face as the window was closing. Something about the shape of the eyes and the cheekbones made him think Russian.

  A slight extra bulkiness to the limo’s body prompted Vince to suspect it was armored. He hoped Gustafson wasn’t in it. If he was, he could take the Humvee, if he lived to do that, and pursue the limo. Maybe force it off the road.

  But there —as he turned back toward the house — wasn’t that the distinct shape of Raoul “the General” Gustafson emerging?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Vince flipped on the night-seeing goggles.

  Through the unnatural green view of the goggles, the porch light’s glare blocked out some of the scene, but he could make out Gustafson putting a small bag in the back of the Humvee. The General wore an overcoat. Definitely leaving. Another handful of seconds and Gustafson would have escaped.

  He still might get away. Vince recognized three of the men with Gustafson from Wolf Base. They’d come in the day before Vince had departed — men from outlying Brethren units. All of them wore Brethren paramilitary uniforms. One of them, a lean man with a long face and a prow of a nose, was a former British paratrooper, Charles Prosser; liked to call himself Chaz. The broad-shouldered stocky guy with the buzzcut was Henry… something. Vincent hadn’t heard his last name. Story was, he was ex-Navy Seal, investigated for murdering Taliban prisoners, and expelled from the service. Dusty Folkson, the tall one with the apish long arms, prognathous jaw, and blond hair tied behind his head, was formerly a Blackwater operative. Investigated for murdering Iraqi civilians. Said to be a Grand Wizard of the Mississippi KKK.

  They were all experienced, dangerous men. And there were three more armed Brethren — one was Gunny Hansen. Vince didn’t know the other two. This could be a tough nut to crack.