Threat warning

by John Gilstrap

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t know the details. All I know is I tell him, and then the problem seems to go away.”

  Jonathan leaned in closer. “What does ‘go away’ mean?”

  The longer the interview went, the smaller Stacy seemed to become. “I mean that I just never hear any more about them. The problem just. .. goes away.” Clearly, it was the only way she knew to phrase it.

  “Does that mean that the children also went away?” Gail asked.

  Stacy’s eyes darted up. “Oh, they weren’t all children. In fact, this is the first one who was a child. That’s why I thought it was so, well, sad.”

  Jonathan was confused. “You mean to tell me that you get calls from adults seeking help from a kidnapping, and you routinely do nothing to stop it?”

  “No, no. Not at all. Not children and not kidnapping. Just people who want to get away and need help doing it.”

  Boxers growled, “And you just hang them out to dry.” He had a way of making the floor move with his voice when he was pissed.

  “It’s not like that,” Stacy said. Her voice showed deep frustration at not being able to get her point across. “They’re all adults over there. Or adults with children. It’s like a closed community. As far as I know, no one’s kept against their will. It’s just that sometimes, I guess, people want to be somewhere else.

  “When we get the call, we turn it over to Sheriff Neen, who himself is pretty active in the Army-or at least he seems to be. He goes out and I guess he talks to them, and then there’s no problem anymore. It’s like an internal matter. A family matter.”

  Gail said, “But in last night’s call, Ryan Nasbe said specifically that he and his mother had been kidnapped. He also said that his kidnappers had killed those people on the bridge in Virginia. Surely you heard about that.”

  Stacy wiped her eyes again.

  “Didn’t you think for a minute to call the police or something?”

  “We are the police, ma’am. Out here, we’re all there is.”

  “The front of every phone book lists the number for the FBI,” Jonathan said.

  Her whole body seemed to sag now. “I’m a dispatcher, Agent Harris. I’m not a sworn officer. I do what I’m told, and in this case, I was told to tell Sheriff Neen and forget about it.” She turned to Gail. “And how do you know so much about this call, anyway?”

  Gail ignored her. “Where do we find Sheriff Neen?”

  Stacy squinted as she looked at the clock on the far wall. Red marks on the side of her nose testified to glasses that she had neglected to put on. “I imagine he’s still at home asleep. He usually gets into the office around nine.”

  “And where’s the headquarters for this Army of God?”

  “The headquarters or the compound?”

  Jonathan waited for it.

  “Well, they’re different places,” Stacy explained. “The man in charge of the Army is Michael Copley, and the-”

  “He owns a factory here,” Jonathan interrupted, recalling the reference from Sam Shockley.

  “Appalachian Acoustics, right. He runs everything there, or so I’m told. So I guess the headquarters would be at his house. His castle, really. The place is huge. But the compound itself is all the way at the end of Hooper Road. Do you know Hooper Road?”

  “I’m sure we can find it,” Gail said.

  “Maybe not,” Stacy corrected. “I don’t think it’s on any map. Anyway, the camp-or the compound, or whatever you call it-is huge. Must be a hundred acres. Maybe even more.”

  “And that land is owned by this Copley guy, too?” Jonathan asked. Venice would verify all of it later, but he was curious what Stacy would say.

  “I guess he owns it.” She shrugged. “I never really thought about it. He owns an awful lot out here. Anyway, there must be a couple of miles of fencing around it, and there are armed guards.”

  That got all of their attentions. “ How armed?” Boxers asked.

  “Pretty darned armed. Rifles and such. Or so I’m told.”

  “And that didn’t impress you as odd?” Gail asked.

  “Everything about them impresses me as odd,” Stacy said. “Start with the fact that they think they’re an army. As if we need another one of those. You hear shooting and stuff from up there all the time. Sheriff Neen says they have one of the best target ranges he’s ever seen. Him and the deputies shoot up there all the time.”

  “And the soldiers?” Jonathan pressed. “Do they shoot up there, too?”

  “I imagine. Why else have a range?”

  “What are they arming up against?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe just to keep people out. I’ve never heard them make any threats or anything. Plus, they’ve got those government contracts, so they can’t be but so far out there.”

  Jonathan raised a hand to seek clarification. “Appalachian Acoustics has the contracts, right? Not the Army of God.”

  Stacy nodded. “Right. Not that there’s a lot of difference. Most of the employees-maybe all of them-are members of the Army and they live on the campgrounds. It’s like the old days when the mines provided housing and the company store.”

  Jonathan remembered Sam Shockley mentioning that she had recently been laid off from the factory. “Has the Army of God always run the factory?”

  “They’ve always been involved, as far as I know, but not like they are now. Lots of folks in this area lost their jobs when Copley decided to bring everything in-house.”

  “Is the factory on the compound?” Boxers asked.

  “Might as well be. There might be a fence or a road or something separating them, but for all intents and purposes they’re on the same property.”

  “Have you ever been up there?” Gail asked.

  “Good heavens, no. That is one secure place. More fences, more guns. I think it has to do with their government contracts.”

  Or their paranoia, Jonathan didn’t say. “What exactly are they contracted to do for the government?”

  Another annoying shrug. “Make stuff, I guess. Whatever stuff they make. What does any of this have to do with the phone call from the boy? Is he somebody special?”

  Jonathan said, “He is now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ryan tried to find a comfortable position in the straight-back wood-and-leather chair, but it wasn’t possible. It was a dining room chair-the kind you’d find only in a very rich man’s house. The chair back was framed in wood, but with a black leather panel that ran down the length of his spine. They’d run his arms through the openings on either side of the panel, and then fastened metal handcuffs to his wrists way too tightly. The only way for him to take the pressure off the bones of his wrists was to shove his arms all the way through the openings, up to the bends in his elbows. To do that, though, meant pressing his forearms through some very narrow spaces. Sure, he was skinny, but there was a limit.

  Even as the sheriff pulled up to the front of the house to drop him off, Ryan had sensed that trouble was on the way. First, there’d been the way the sheriff had been acting all during their ride, after he’d picked him up; but the real fear didn’t hit him until he saw the guards dressed in black on the front porch.

  He was tired of guards dressed in black. Apparently, everybody in West Virginia was a terrorist.

  When Sheriff Neen looked at him, Ryan sensed that he even felt a little apologetic.

  “Why are you doing this?” Ryan had asked.

  “It’s a new world, son,” he’d said. “And it appears that you just got sucked up into it.”

  He’d allowed himself to be cuffed without a fight, partly out of sheer exhaustion, but mostly out of a hopeless sense that he’d been rendered powerless.

  So here he sat trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey in the middle of some rich guy’s dining room, sucked up into a steaming pile of bad news, while on the other side of closed doors on the opposite side of the house, two men yelled at each other.

  Ryan couldn’t make out t
he words, but there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that whatever was being said, the anger was about him.

  Michael Copley’s mind reeled at the multiple layers of incompetence. Kendig Neen sat comfortably in the leather club chair next to the fireplace in Brother Michael’s office, his legs crossed while he casually fingered the waxed edge of his mustache.

  The son of a jackal didn’t even have the decency to show remorse. “What do you have to say for yourself?” Copley challenged.

  Neen seemed to ponder that, and then said, “You’re welcome?”

  Copley felt his ears redden. Neen had always worn an arrogant streak, but this was too much. “Excuse me?” He sharpened his tone to sound as menacing as he could.

  Neen cleared his throat and said more loudly, “You’re welcome. You know, for bringing the boy back in safely and stopping this publicity hunt of yours from turning into a disaster.”

  Copley felt himself breathing heavily. “You arrogant prick,” he said. “He’s a boy, and he escaped from the prison you set up, after getting past the guards that you trained.”

  “Which in both cases never should have existed in the first place.”

  “We’re at war, Brother Kendig,” Copley bellowed.

  “On two fronts,” Neen bellowed back, matching the tone exactly. “One of which should never have been opened.”

  “That is not for you to decide! The Board of Elders decided that now was the time-”

  “I’m on the Board of Elders, remember?” Neen said. He’d modulated his voice back to the late-night-DJ tone that suited him so well. “And with few yet notable exceptions, the elders are your lapdogs. If you asked them to stick needles in their eyes, three quarters of them would do it without questioning the wisdom of blindness.”

  Brother Michael took a deep breath to yell, but settled himself. Spiking his blood pressure would help no one and change nothing. “We’ve had this discussion before, Brother Kendig. That you disagree with the opinion of the majority does not grant you authority to disregard their decision.”

  “Which is why I established a prison room on the compound and why I trained a contingent of guards.”

  “Yet their performance was abysmal.”

  “I don’t know that that’s true,” Neen said. “I mean, clearly, something went wrong if the boy was able to get away, but I have no idea yet what that something might have been. I’m told that the guard who was supposed to be on duty-Brother Stephen-is in fact missing.”

  “Where-”

  “I don’t know where. But Brother Michael, you have to understand that this is yet another case where you refuse to acknowledge that actions have consequences.”

  Copley scoffed, “Certainly it’s plain that investing in guard training has the consequence of incompetence.”

  “And what about the panic you instilled in that family by making them read a statement to the world that they would be executed? Do you think maybe that increased their desire to get out, and therefore made them take chances that they otherwise never would?”

  “We needed symbols-”

  “To hell with the symbols, Michael,” Neen blurted.

  The words hit Copley like a hammer. “How dare you?”

  Neen laughed. “How dare you? Don’t you think that the trail of dead bodies across the country is enough of a symbol? Do you really think that we need the image of a mother and her child to make people any more frightened than they already are?”

  “You pretend to know the entire plan, Brother Kendig,” Copley said. “You do not. All of this plays an important role.”

  “I know more than you think I do. I know that the importance of the GSA contract for your company reaches far beyond the revenue that it will generate. We’re this close, Brother Michael, to accomplishing all that we’ve fought so long to achieve. We can bring the disunited states of America back to its roots. We can tear it away from the money grubbers and the Users.”

  “It’s not that we can, Brother Kendig. It’s that we will.”

  Neen gave a little wave to concede the point. “Fine. Absolutely. We will succeed. Just as you said. But we can do it without the grandstanding for the cameras.”

  Copley eased himself into the chair opposite the one occupied by Neen. “I heard the recording, Brother Kendig,” he said. “I know who this boy’s father is. He’s one of the very people who is bringing so much misery to the world.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his ankles as he interlaced his fingers across his chest. “His father is a U.S. soldier. Special Forces.”

  Neen became suspicious, cocking his head to the side. “What’s your point?”

  “He is the point on the sword,” Copley said. “He leads the fighting that creates all the evil. We have an opportunity to show the world that no one is safe. Not even their most elite warriors.”

  Neen waited for the rest.

  “Think of the spectacle. We can hold a public trial and stream it to the world.”

  “No,” Neen said. “God, no, Michael, you can’t go there. You can’t even think that way.”

  Was that weakness he saw in the sheriff’s face? Fear on the countenance of Kendig Neen?

  “This is what I was talking about,” Neen said. His voice grew louder. “This is the hubris that will be our undoing.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Copley fired back. “This is what will make the Movement famous throughout the world.”

  “As the stupidest thing done in a generation. Have you forgotten nine-eleven?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Brother Kendig. That was a botched effort by a bunch of amateur-”

  “It rallied three hundred million people to go to war!” Neen boomed. “The greatest mistake those jihadists made was to deliver a symbol to the media. The symbol becomes manipulated and what is righteous becomes evil.”

  Copley smiled. “And that is exactly the point, is it not? They think that we are those very jihadists.”

  “But sooner or later, you’re going to have to reveal the truth. After the world rallies behind us-once the government is exposed in all its weakness, and they realize that it is safe to rise up against the true evildoers in Washington-this business of harming a soldier’s family will be all that people remember.”

  Copley sighed. How could a man so smart be so naive? “What you’re missing, Kendig, is that-”

  A knock on the door interrupted them. It was louder than it should have been and more rapid than normal. That spoke of a problem, Copley thought. “Come,” he said.

  The door opened to reveal Brother Duane-one of the elders-towering in the frame next to Sister Colleen, whose red eyes betrayed the fact that she had been crying.

  “What is it?” Copley asked.

  “I’m afraid we have some terrible news,” Brother Duane said.

  A door slammed down the hall, and Ryan heard the sound of heavy feet in the hallway. They were coming toward him, and they were many. His heart rate spiked as he did his best to straighten himself in his seat, but his arms remained pinioned behind him and threaded through the chair.

  They appeared in the archway as a group-Ryan counted seven of them-and all but the sheriff who’d brought him here wore the same heavy black boots as the men who stormed their prison room. This time, though, there were no masks. Among them, he recognized the bitch they’d picked up in the car a hundred years ago. Or maybe it was only a day.

  They formed a kind of wedge in the space that separated the dining room from the hallway, anchored in the middle by a thirtysomething blond man who looked angrier than anyone Ryan had ever seen. If the wedge were an arrowhead, the angry man would have been the point. The others were angry, too; but that anchor guy was scary.

  If Ryan wasn’t mistaken, the only girl in the group-her name was Cathleen, wasn’t it? No, but something like that-looked less angry than the others. In fact, she mostly looked scared.

  The man said, “You’re a murderer.”

  “I’m not,” Ryan said. “That asshole attacked my mother.”r />
  The man closed the distance that separated them in four long strides. He was still moving when he unleashed a wicked open-handed smack across Ryan’s face. He smelled blood instantly, and within seconds, streams were flowing from both nostrils.

  “You will not use that language in my house!” the man bellowed.

  “That’s what he is,” Ryan said. He wanted to sound defiant, but he ended up having to cough blood from his throat. He needed to spit, but he knew that would be trouble. If you’re not allowed to say “asshole,” then spitting blood on the carpet was a non-starter. “He was trying to rape her,” he said.

  Maybe the next slap hurt more because it landed with more force. Or maybe it just landed in exactly the same spot. Either way, it made a purple strobe flash behind his eyes as something bounced around inside his head.

  Maybe it knocked him out, because the next thing Ryan knew, he was sideways on the floor, carpet against his face. He was vaguely aware that the carpet was for sure stained now.

  “… kill him,” someone said. Ryan thought it was the sheriff, and his tone sounded more like a warning than a suggestion. Anyway, it didn’t scare him.

  “No one fouls the name of a brave warrior in my presence.”

  “Get him up, for heaven’s sake,” the sheriff said.

  Hands were on him, pulling and lifting, and a lightning bolt of pain shot through Ryan’s right arm, from wrist to elbow, launching a howl that to him sounded like it was coming from someone else.

  “Look what you did,” the sheriff said. “You broke his arm.”

  Oh, shit, Ryan thought. They broke my arm? Then his head cleared. Oh, shit. They broke my arm!

  “Ow!” he yelled. Then he shrieked it as they continued to lift him, still tied to the chair. As he shifted in his seat, the bones shifted under the skin and it felt like they were tearing off his arm like a drumstick. “Stop! Stop! Oh, God, please stop!”

  Things flashed behind his eyes again, but this time he didn’t think it was because he was being hit. He thought it was just the pain. He’d felt pain before, but this was something new. This was Technicolor pain, sharper and brighter than anything he’d felt before, like the difference between Dorothy in Kansas and Dorothy in Oz. And what a weird analogy, he thought.