24 Declassified: Head Shot 2d-10

by David S. Jacobs

  Jack said, “Sounds good. What about an air assault, a private plane that’s a flying bomb designed to crash into the building?”

  Anne Armstrong said, “We’re ahead of you there, Jack. You came into the middle of the movie on that score. We’ve got the Air Force and the Air National Guard posted to forestall just such an attempt. The air space for a several hundred square miles around has been declared a restricted no-fly zone for the conference. Any unauthorized aircraft entering the zone will be forced down or shot down. Besides which, it would take a hell of a pilot to be able to fly through these peaks to make the approach.”

  Don Bass added, “But in case some hotshot should get through, confidentially, we’ve got an anti-aircraft nest set up in the heights armed with a couple of Stinger missiles as a last resort.”

  Jack said, “Glad to hear it.”

  Cabot Wright shook his head sadly. “Lord! The precautions that must be taken merely to hold a peaceful and positive gathering whose purpose is the betterment of society and the national — and global— economy! It’s enough to drive one to despair…”

  Jack said, “That’s the way we have to live today.”

  The double doors opened and Larry Noone entered, purposeful, grim-faced. Don Bass said, “What is it, Larry?” Noone said, “Those ATF agents have just been found.”

  7. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 A.M. AND 10 A.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME

  Lone Pine Gorge, Colorado

  The car was at the bottom of Lone Pine Gorge. The gorge was a narrow, rocky, V-shaped cleft in the foothills of Mount Nagaii.

  Jack and Anne Armstrong had to approach it by a dirt road that turned west off Nagaii Drive, traversing several miles of woodlands before curving north to run along the bottom of the slope. The rutted road was in bad shape, and it was a rough ride for the Mercedes.

  The road skirted the gorge, bypassing it. The mouth of the cleft was obscured by a lot of brush and would have been easy to miss had it not been for the cars and emergency vehicles parked outside it.

  A woodland path branched off the dirt road, leading into the gorge. The path was too tough for the Mercedes. The two agents had to get out and walk. They were challenged by a county sheriff’s department deputy posted at the foot of the path to keep out civilians and other unauthorized personnel. They showed their CTU ID cards and were allowed to proceed.

  Trees grew on both sides of the gorge entrance, meeting overhead to form a canopy of foliage. The path was little more than a trail, accessible only to heavy-duty SUVs rigged for off-road running. The overhanging trees formed a tunnel through a hundred feet or so of greenery. It was cool and dim under the trees except where sunbeams slanted through gaps between the boughs.

  The tunnel ended, opening into a steep-sided ravine bright with sunlight. A thin trickling creek ran through the middle of the bottom of the gorge. Tufts of dry, weedy grass sprouted in clumps along its length.

  The rocky terrain otherwise supported little in the way of vegetation. The north side featured a projecting ledge about two hundred feet above the ground on which stood a single tree. A long-dead tree weathered silver-gray, its twisted branches bare of any foliage. Jack guessed that this was the lone pine that had given the gorge its name, although as far as he could see there was nothing about it to identify it as a pine.

  Jack was feeling better, his headache had lessened, possibly because of the aspirins or being at a lower attitude or a combination of the two. The left side of his face where he’d been struck still felt stiff and swollen, though.

  A few vehicles — a tow truck and two police SUVs — had managed to bull their way up the trail path and into the gorge. A knot of people was centered around a wreck at the bottom of the ravine.

  The wreck had been a dark green sedan; now it looked like a piece of metal that had been wadded up into a ball and thrown away. Jack looked up to see where the car had gone off the edge of Rimrock Road some eight hundred feet above. He had to tilt his head far back to see it, so that he was looking almost straight up. Police and emergency personnel were clustered around the wreck. A few paramedics stood off to one side, waiting; there wasn’t much for them to do until the two occupants were freed from the wreck. They’d have little more to do when that time came than to declare them DOA, dead on arrival.

  Some mechanics from the tow truck were wrestling with a Jaws of Life device to pry open the collapsed metal, but the wreck was so crumpled up that they were unsure of where to begin applying the pressure and had already gotten off to a few false starts.

  Jack stood at the edge of the group, craning to see inside the wreck. A pulpy mass of flesh and tangled limbs was sandwiched inside the collapsed heap, in such a condition that it was impossible to tell if it comprised one body or two.

  A man in a pair of gray twill coveralls who’d been laboring in vain to pry open a compressed metal flange looked up and said, “This ain’t working. We’ll probably have to cut ’em out with a torch.”

  A county deputy said, “Can’t do that here, too much risk of fire.”

  The mechanic said, “No gas in the tank. It busted on the way down and spilled the contents all over the gorge. Lucky it didn’t catch fire and burn.”

  “Yeah, lucky.”

  “You don’t want to start fooling around with a torch with all that spilled gas around here. Might start off a real blaze.”

  “Best tow it into town then.”

  “How? Got to have at least two working wheels on it to give it a tow and there ain’t none of them. Nothing to tow.”

  A man in a short-brimmed hat and a dark suit who’d been listening to the conversation put himself forward. “You can’t just leave them out here, for God’s sake.”

  Anne Armstrong told Jack, “That’s Inspector Cullen of the Denver branch of the ATF.” She spoke in a low voice so that only he could hear it.

  The mechanic said, “My advice is to hook it up to the tow truck winch and drag it out of here to the dirt road. Get a flatbed truck out there. Flatbed couldn’t get into here but it should be able to handle the access road. Hoist the wreck on the flatbed and take it to town where we can open it properly with the right tools.”

  Cullen said, “Do it, then.”

  The mechanic looked him up and down. “And who might you be, mister?”

  “Cullen of the ATF. Those are my men in there.”

  “Oh. Sorry. You’ll sign the authorization? I got to know who to bill for it, the county or the state or whoever—”

  “The Federal government’ll pay for it. Give me the paperwork and I’ll sign it and you can get the show on the road.”

  “Coming right up, mister. Again, sorry about them fellows of yours. These mountain roads are a tricky proposition in even the best of weather.” The mechanic went to the tow truck to get the paperwork.

  Jack and Anne Armstrong went over to Cullen. She and Cullen were professionally acquainted, having worked joint operations in the past. Cullen had a wedge-shaped face with narrow slitted eyes, a knife-blade nose, and a thin horizontal slit of a mouth. Armstrong and Jack expressed their condolences.

  Cullen said, “Mountain road my eye! Dean and O’Hara have been working this territory for years. They were both expert drivers. If that is them in the wreck.”

  Jack said, “Do you have any reason to doubt it?”

  “The condition they’re in, their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them. But I’m sure it’ll turn out to be them, worse luck. It was no driving mishap that did them in, though.”

  “I’d say that’s a sure bet.”

  Cullen turned his narrow-eyed gaze full on Jack. “You know that or are you just guessing?”

  “We lost a man at Red Notch last night and it was no accident. He was shot dead.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Frank Neal.”

  “Too bad. He was a good man. So were O’Hara and Dean. And it happened last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dean and O’Hara went missi
ng the night before, Wednesday. I figure that that’s when whatever happened to them happened. The car wasn’t found until today. Somebody reported a gap in the guardrail up top yesterday, but the wreck couldn’t be seen from up there so it wasn’t followed up on. A Boy Scout troop hiking in the area found it early this morning.

  “Neal was killed last night, eh? That compound’s a death trap even after it’s been abandoned. Who did it? Zealots?”

  Jack shrugged. “No proof on that either way yet.”

  Cullen shook his head. “They were always a screwball outfit, but nothing compared to some of the other groups on our list. No history of any real violence apart from minor scuffles at demonstrations, breaking windows, resisting arrest, that sort of thing. We monitored them more as a preventive measure than anything else, to make sure they kept out of trouble.

  “Well, they’re in it now, right up to their necks. Too bad killers don’t hang anymore. Lethal injection is a whole lot less satisfying somehow. But I’ll settle for it when we get the bastards.”

  Anne Armstrong said, “Were your men working on anything specific on Wednesday night?”

  Cullen shook his head. “Routine monitoring, maybe stepped up a notch on account of this Round Table meeting. What about your man?”

  “Just doing a follow- up, checking out the compound.”

  “The Zealots must’ve gone kill-crazy. Maybe Prewitt had a divine revelation that the time had come for him to take up the sword.”

  “He’s not the type for divine revelations. More likely he reasoned that events required him to seize the world- historical moment.”

  “We’ll ask him before he’s wheeled into the death chamber on a gurney.” Jack said, “Got to find him first.”

  Cullen said, “We’ll find him.”

  The mechanic approached with a clipboard with a stack of papers attached. Cullen said, “Excuse me, I’ve got to take care of this.”

  Anne Armstrong said, “We’ve got to be going, too. I’m sorry about your men.”

  Cullen said, “That goes for me, too. I liked Neal.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could send me a copy of the autopsy reports on O’Hara and Dean.”

  “Will do. Keep me posted on anything you get.”

  “Of course.”

  Cullen went into a huddle with the mechanic, scowling as he scanned the estimate of charges. The CTU pair drifted away.

  Jack said, “I’m sure a postmortem will show that Dean and O’Hara were dead before they went over that cliff. I’d also like to have them tested for traces of CWs in their bloodstream.”

  Anne Armstrong said, “It can be arranged, but this wasn’t the time and place to bring it up. That aspect will have to be handled with extreme delicacy.”

  “But quickly. The Round Table is already in session.”

  “You don’t need to remind me of that,” she said. “I think we’ve seen all there is to see here.”

  Jack nodded. They went back down the ravine and through the arcade of overhanging trees to where their car was parked. Jack said, “There’s a familiar face.”

  He was referring to the MRT’s Cole Taggart. Taggart and a county deputy were having words with two bikers. The bikers looked like the real thing, hard-core outlaw motorcyclists. “One-percenters,” as they were called, their own mocking self-description to distinguish themselves from the “ninety-nine percent of respectable, law-abiding motorcyclists” that industry spokesmen and proponents for responsible biking enthusiasts routinely invoked to polish up the public image that in their view had been tarnished by the fringe outlaw element.

  Not so unusual a sight in the West, where biker gangs were more numerous and firmly established than in the more urbanized areas east of the Mississippi. Denver and its surroundings had more than their fair share of renegade motorcycle clubs.

  These two specimens were emblematic of the type. Each sat astride a heavy-duty Harley customized with extended front forks and all the trimmings. The duo were down and dirty in greasy, well-worn denims, but their machines were in top shape, their gleaming streamlined shapes marred only by a coating of dust picked up while cruising the dirt road. The machines weren’t dirt bikes built for off-roading but rather muscular cycles designed for high- speed highway long hauls. One thing outlaw bikers can do is ride, handling their machines with the facility of a Cossack on horseback, taking them to the streets or the back trails as they pleased.

  Jack’s activities in the past had caused him to work undercover operations among outlaw motorcycle clubs with a penchant for gunrunning and operating meth labs, so he eyed these two with a professional interest.

  One of them was medium-sized, with long, greasy black hair slicked back and a hipster goatee. His eyes were banded with oversized sunglasses that looked like the kind worn by patients recovering from cataract operations. Jack figured there was nothing wrong with the cyclist’s eyesight and that he sported the shades because they provided a kind of effective half mask, obscuring his features. His face above and below the dark glasses was wizened, sharp-featured, and weasely.

  The other was big, hulking, pumped up with that comic book superhero physique that comes from steroid use. Reddish-gold hair was combed up in a pompadour and hung down the back of his neck in a classic mullet. His nose was crooked from having been broken several times, and he had a wide, jack-o’-lantern mouth.

  The smaller of the two was saying, “We saw that some joker must’ve gone off the high side but we couldn’t see nothing from up there so we came down for a better look.”

  The deputy said, “There’s nothing to see so you can go back the way you came.”

  The big biker said, “That’s some drop. How many people got killed?”

  Taggart said, “You can read about it in the papers.”

  The big biker snickered. “Reading? What’s that, man?”

  His buddy laughed, said, “That’s telling him, Rowdy.”

  The deputy said, “You can practice by reading a few traffic summonses if you like.”

  Rowdy said, “Hey man, what’re you picking on us for? We ain’t doing nothing.”

  Taggart said, “Go do it somewhere else.”

  The deputy said, “We don’t rightly care for your kind hereabouts. Make yourself scarce, unless you’d like to spend ninety days as a guest of the county.”

  Rowdy turned to his buddy, said, “You heard the man, Griff. No point hanging around where we’re not wanted.”

  Griff said, “I can take a hint.”

  The dirt road was narrow and the bikers had to manoeuvre their machines to turn around. Their backs were to Jack and for the first time he could see their colors, the emblem of their club that was sewn to the backs of their sleeveless denim vests.

  Their insignia depicted a demonic, quasi- humanoid Gila monster straddling a souped- up cycle on two stumpy legs. It bore the legend: “Hellbenders M.C.”

  Hellbenders Motorcycle Club. Jack had heard of them. A tough outfit, very tough. They’d been in the headlines about six months ago when some of their leaders had been swooped up in a high- profile gunrunning bust.

  One area of equipment where their bikes came up short was in the muffler department. The choppers took off with an earsplitting crack of iron thunder. The machines churned up dust clouds as they vroomed east on the dirt road, heading for Nagaii Drive.

  The deputy and Taggart watched them go. The deputy muttered, “A- holes. You know if you search them bikers you’d find a half-dozen violations easy. And you know what’d happen if I did that?”

  Taggart said, “No, what?”

  “The sheriff’d have me on the carpet for a royal ass-chewing, for diverting precious departmental resources on them hog-riding fools when we’re already stretched thin providing security for the Round Table.”

  Taggart laughed. “That’s why he’s sheriff. He’s got his priorities right. Nothing’s more important than making sure that nobody crashes that private party for Richie Riches.”

  The depu
ty said, “Soon as they haul that wreck with those two stiffs in it out of here, I got to go back to patrolling Sky Mount.”

  “You and me both, brother.”

  “I don’t know what the big deal is. It ain’t like that heap was going anyplace.”

  “It had a couple of ATF guys in it, so that makes it Federal.”

  “Big deal.”

  Taggart joked, “Maybe they were drunk when they went over the edge.”

  That got a laugh out of the deputy. “That’s what I’m going to do when the conference is done — get drunk. And not before then. They’ve got us all pulling double shifts while it’s on. All leaves and days off canceled for the duration.”

  Taggart said, “Times are tough all over.”

  Jack and Anne Armstrong had to cross the road to get to where their car was parked. Their path crossed that of Taggart and the deputy. The deputy had seen their credentials when they first arrived so he let them pass without comment.

  Jack and Taggart made eye contact. Jack said, “Small world.”

  Taggart smiled. “Miller Fisk is mad at you.”

  “He can have a rematch anytime he wants.”

  “He ain’t that mad. Anyhow, Hardin’s got him pulling roadblock duty way up in the hills right now. He’s so teed off at Fisk that Fisk is lucky he’s not cleaning latrines at the station instead.”

  “Is Hardin mad at him for abusing a prisoner or for getting chopped down to size?”

  “There’s a question. You’ll have to ask Bryce the answer to that one.”

  “And you?”

  “Far as I’m concerned, that overgrown plowboy got what’s been coming to him for a long time. ’Course, I ain’t related to him, like Bryce is.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Fisk is Hardin’s nephew. You don’t think Fisk made the MRT because he’s a regular Sherlock Holmes, do you?”