The Blood of Patriots

by William W. Johnstone

  Randolph looked back at the valley. “Some stuff does figure, though. If it’s the same guys who hit me, my property gives them better access to this spot. They’ve probably been coming up that way since I’ve been gone.”

  “It also gives them privacy,” Ward said. “No neighbors.”

  “To do what, though?” Randolph asked.

  That was the question, Ward thought. Assuming these were the Muslim kids, and assuming they were not out for joyrides, could this be what the NYPD terror briefings had feared? Not only homegrown terror but the birth of an al Qaeda–like movement on American soil. It was one thing to watch for names on no-fly lists or to search the ports with radiation detectors or spot-check vans for explosives. To fight an organization among us was a very different matter. It would require more CIA and FBI eyes to be diverted inward, as the resources of NORAD were after 9/11. The satellite and ground-based radar were no longer looking for Russian planes crossing the DEW line up north. They were looking for domestic commercial flights that diverged even a quarter-mile from established routes. Fortunately, there are no MiGs coming after us anymore, Ward thought. But there are still foreign combatants. The war on terror was difficult enough on one front. On two ...

  But that in itself wasn’t Ward’s only concern. He still hadn’t answered the question Why Basalt? There were plenty of depressed towns, probably a lot of them bordering isolated regions hard-hit by the recession—lumber towns, steel towns, coal towns. There had to be bankers in those places who would be happy to launder money. Maybe the Muslims were in some of those already.

  Is Basalt part of a cross-country route? Or is there something about this city in particular? Ward was guessing the latter. Moreover, the Muslims had pushed to get Randolph out of the way for these last couple of days. Probably, as he suggested, through his property. That told Ward something was imminent.

  As they turned from the cliff, Ward knew one thing for certain: because the Muslims took the risk they did at Randolph’s place, there might not be a couple of days more to figure it out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The bank day was long and miserable.

  Earl Dickson felt the eyes of Hamza on him every moment that he was at his desk. His havens were the lavatory and the vault, and he could only stay in those for a few minutes. Even then, knowing that he had to go back to behaving normally when he didn’t feel normal made those moments anything but relaxing. When the financial world had caved in on him a few years before, he had wept in his wife’s lap. But he had never in his life felt trapped enough to want to scream.

  Until now.

  And then there were the other officers and the tellers. The Fryingpan had never needed a security guard before. Was there a threat they should know about? Were they being spied on for some reason?

  “No,” Dickson had assured them individually, even though he himself was anything but a poster child for calm. “The police simply advised us to do this because—well, you know, tough economic times make banks a tempting target and we are close to the highway. On, zip off, and get on again. This makes us much, much safer, I guarantee.”

  It did, too. One look at Hamza and a potential robber would pick some other target.

  Only Dickson didn’t feel safe.

  Typically, the bank manager sent out for lunch and ate at his desk. Today he went to the one place he knew Hamza wouldn’t follow him, Papa Vito’s. He didn’t care if the big guy sat in the parking lot and watched him. He needed to put a wall or window between himself and the big man.

  But Hamza didn’t follow. He remained at the bank and ate in his car.

  The pizzeria was crowded as always. After ordering his slices and 7UP, Dickson found an empty chair at one of the wooden tables. He pushed away an empty beer pitcher and paper plate and then virtually deflated.

  Vito himself brought Dickson’s tray, leaning between Dickson and Monty Stringer, an out-of-work landscaper who was watching CNN on the flatscreen over the bar. Dickson suspected it was he who had emptied the pitcher.

  “I always see you over there,” Vito said, cocking his head of gray hair in the general direction of the bank. “What brings you here?”

  “I needed to get out.”

  “I know the feeling,” Vito replied.

  “I doubt it,” Dickson told him. His eyes were on his dull, distorted reflection in the pitcher. He seemed startled when Vito removed it. “Hold on. Why did you say that—‘I know the feeling’?” Dickson asked upon reflection.

  “Let’s just say I done some not-so-nice things when I was a young man,” Vito replied. “It was very difficult to leave them behind.”

  “What kind of things did you do?”

  Vito shot him a wry look. “Not-so-nice things.”

  “Illegal?”

  Vito’s twisted expression answered in the affirmative. Dickson stood and pulled him aside. They stood under the Budweiser clock near the entrance to the restroom. No one else was around.

  “Talk to me,” the banker said.

  “I can’t,” Vito replied. He looked at Dickson knowingly for a moment then jabbed a stubby index finger at his face. “But I recognize that look. You’ve done something too. You need to get out of that.”

  Dickson nodded. He was too beaten down to deny it.

  “Do you sleep at night?” Vito asked.

  “Not so well.”

  “Is your family hurting?”

  Dickson nodded.

  “Then you need to make a change,” Vito said.

  “I realized that today,” Dickson said. “I just don’t know how.”

  “I’ll tell you this much,” Vito said. “Nothing comes without a price. You leave a terrible job, then you’re unemployed. You end a bad marriage, you may upset the children and you lose half your things.”

  “It’s worse than all that,” Dickson said.

  “Then the only question you need to ask, and answer, is, ‘Will the place I’m going be better than where I am?’”

  Dickson considered that. “Is yours?”

  Vito smirked. “Some days yes, some days no. But what keeps me awake isn’t in here,” he touched three steepled fingers to his heart. “That pain was going to destroy me. This is part of my atoning.”

  “What about your family?” Dickson asked soberly. “Were they at risk?”

  Vito hesitated then glanced down. “There are some situations—how to say this? You start a family and then you realize they need a different father. To keep the one they have, as he is ... that’s a risk of a certain kind. It was the kind that weighed on me when I closed my eyes and saw their future.”

  “This change you made wasn’t just about you, then.”

  “No. Where I was—I would have done anything to give my wife, my baby, a different life.”

  Dickson pursed his lips and nodded. Vito took him by the elbow back to his seat, straightened the chair, and sat him down.

  “One trick I learned,” Vito said, raising the stubby index finger. “Actually, it was told to me by someone who helped me to get out. This fellow, he said, ‘Vito, a year from now this will all be behind you.’ I clung to that—and he was right. It’s been many years and I do not regret my decision. My family is happier, and because of that I’m happier. My own disappointments?” He shrugged. “What man doesn’t have some?”

  Dickson thanked him then sat and chewed on his pizza as he thought about his wife and especially Angie. It had hit him hard this morning over breakfast. His daughter was in a situation not of her making, one that had criminal implications. He had no right to do that to her, regardless of what it cost him.

  You sent your thug on the wrong day, Dickson thought as he finished his meal and walked into the sun and stared at the Al Huda Center on the opposite side of the street.

  He did not return immediately to the bank. Instead, he turned right and crossed to where the street intersected Two Rivers Road.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ward felt a little better having stretched th
e bandages, then rising and walking back and forth across the rock, then down to where they had left the horses. He didn’t delude himself into thinking he was healed, but he knew he felt good enough to do whatever he had to do.

  Now, all he had to do was convince Randolph. The farmer was over by the horses, preparing them for the return trip.

  “I’m staying,” Ward announced as he arrived.

  “To do what?” Randolph demanded.

  “You don’t leave a stakeout scene unmanned,” Ward said. “You just don’t.”

  “Uh huh. And—you got a radio? You got backup down the block?”

  “Will my cell work up here?”

  “Probably,” Randolph said. “Got about a half-dozen towers disguised as poplars scattered around. But I’m not exactly a quick sprint away.”

  “That’s okay,” Ward told him.

  “You realize then that you’re here for the night. Horses don’t do well in the dark. And you’ll have to gather grass to feed him—get him to the creek for waterin’.”

  “I can handle that.”

  “Take the saddle off—”

  “I was paying attention.”

  Randolph huffed. “You’re just sayin’ what you think I want to hear.”

  “I’m saying I’m staying,” Ward said.

  Randolph shook his head. “You’re a grown man. I ain’t gonna argue.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re not gonna do anything stupid, reckless, like you did back in New York.”

  “Hopefully,” Ward said. “Go. Move it. You need to get back to town and check those maps.”

  “I’ve got a laptop at the cabin.”

  Ward looked at him with surprise.

  “I got WiFi too,” Randolph said. “I’m not a caveman. I’ll find ’em online in the city archives.”

  “Okay,” Ward said. “Call me when you find out something.”

  “Your phone is on vibrate?”

  “Always,” Ward said. “Professional eavesdropper can’t afford to have Celine Dion coming from his belt.”

  “I’ll leave that statement be,” Randolph said as he mounted. “Awright, John. I’ll talk to you later and I’ll be back in the morning. Just remember—it gets real dark up here. We don’t have streetlights and there isn’t a decent moon for another week.”

  “Got it.”

  Randolph handed him the field glasses. “You’ll be needing these to keep watch. But remember something—there’s only two ways down there, with a rope or falling. And you ain’t got a rope.”

  “I know.”

  With a long, lingering look as mistrustful as any Ward had ever witnessed, Randolph swung his mount around and started down the rocky path. Ward did not wait for him to disappear under the tree line before returning to the cliff. He liked and respected Randolph, but he needed to apply himself to this thing without distraction. And not from a distance. There was no way to find out what was going on below if he was up here.

  Ward looked out at the sun. He figured it would set behind the tallest peak in about twenty or thirty minutes. That would provide some darkness for what he was contemplating.

  After seeing to the needs of the horse—the creek was just fifty yards back and removing the saddle was easier than putting it on—Ward fashioned a shoulder harness from his belt. He looped it over his left arm, tightening it high, and fastened the gun to his back. That would also help to keep him rigid so he didn’t re-injure his ribs. He jumped up and down, moved from side to side as much as the bandages would allow. When he was sure the rig would hold, Ward went to the saddle and took a six-inch knife from its scabbard.

  “You’d probably think this was nuts if you understood it,” he said to Scout.

  The horse was too content to acknowledge him.

  “It is nuts,” Ward said as he cut away the stirrups. “But this is war, fella, and war is never sane.”

  The stirrups were bell-bottom aluminum with leather studs that kept them from rubbing the horse. They should work perfectly for what Ward had in mind. Next, he slipped the reins from the bridle and cut them into two equal strips. Then he sliced two smaller straps from the bridle. Returning to the ledge, he sat and wrapped the leather straps around his hands. He made them tight, like a boxer, but not so tight that they cut off circulation. The difference in his bindings and those of a fighter is that he wrapped the index and middle fingers of both hands as well, tying them together.

  Ward had been studying the cliff while Randolph had been watching the valley floor. The problem before him was not the two thousand foot cliff. It was the first five hundred feet or so. The slightly sloping surface was like a waterfall made of rock, a striated plug of stone that reminded him of pictures he’d seen of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. The rock was dark and there were thick, vertical ribs of stone bulging here and there. Since most of the surface was rock, there was little risk of stirring dust that would catch the sunlight and be spotted below. Below that, as far as he could see, was a more navigable surface: aspens jutting from a carpet of soil and ground foliage, mostly vines and thick, short grasses littered with what the binoculars told him were probably pine cones. The way the detective figured it, once he reached the tree line he could descend in a zigzag fashion, on his seat, using the trees to break his descent by going from trunk to trunk. The tall old trees seemed deeply rooted in the cliff face and did not appear to be more than twenty feet apart at most. It looked like they could take him skidding into the boles. Even if he couldn’t get all the way down, Ward knew he could get a much better view from anywhere other than here. The reasons for doing this were compelling; they had to be. Once he committed to it, there was no scrambling back.

  He stuck the field glasses in his right pants pocket, made sure the phone was securely stuffed down in his left pocket, and fastened the knife sheath to a belt loop. He took a final sip of water before laying the canteen over his other shoulder. He sat and put the stirrups over his shoes, securing them with the two smaller bridle strips. Though he may have looked the part of an army ranger, he felt like a crazy New Yorker.

  He wasn’t sure that was a bad thing. An army ranger would be too smart to try this.

  Ward edged to a spot in the cliff just above one of the bulging ribs of rock. It was nearly as wide as he was and should serve his purpose. He got on his knees facing the horse. Scout seemed preternaturally content, which had a calming effect on the detective. He flexed his fingers to make sure they had some play, breathed slowly and steadily the way he did before busting into a crack house.

  And then, when the sun was gone, he lowered himself over the side.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The 7UP Dickson had slugged down felt like it was still bubbling in his gut as he crossed to the community center. He was anxious, no doubt about that. Vito’s talk had only given him so much confidence when it came to “doing the right thing.” The rest was a combination of desperation, indignation, and anger.

  You tried this earlier and it didn’t work, Dickson thought. But things were different, then. You weren’t ready to call his bluff.

  Now he was. He looked up a number and programmed it into his cell phone, kept the device in his hand as he entered the center. He noticed, before going inside, that Hamza was in his car at the bank parking lot. The thug was watching him.

  Dickson didn’t care. With a little luck, he’d be rid of the man before very long.

  He walked up to the reception desk and asked to see Gahrah. The receptionist told Dickson he was in a meeting with the imam.

  “Where are they?” Dickson asked. “I’ll be happy to talk to them both.”

  That felt good. These people had told him what he could or couldn’t do for the last time.

  The woman just stared at him for a moment, then punched a number, spoke a few words in Farsi, and told Dickson the director would see him in the office.

  The banker knew the way. He turned from her without smiling. He’d had it with being polite. She hadn’t earned that courte
sy.

  The door buzzed open, he went inside, and walked quickly down the corridor. The insurance he needed had a shelf life of maybe five minutes.

  Gahrah was just entering through a side door as Dickson came in the front. The director stepped behind the desk and wordlessly held his hand toward a seat.

  “No thanks,” Dickson said. “This won’t take long.” He was taller than Gahrah by nearly a head and for the first time he felt it. “Mr. Gahrah—we’re done.”

  “Mr. Dickson,” the director said with a trace of impatience, “I thought we put this behind us.”

  “I guess not. Having your man in the bank has everyone on edge. They’re afraid we’re going to be robbed and that I’m lying to them. And your boy hanging around—I don’t like it.”

  “I am sorry those things were necessary, but it was your own—”

  “Stop! I’m tired of being blamed for things that are just you being a control freak, overreaching because you think you have me in a corner. Well I don’t care anymore. If I go down, you go down with me. All of you.”

  Gahrah eased into his chair. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “You’ve left me no choice. I did what I was supposed to, we both benefited, and now I’m finished. That’s how business works, Mr. Gahrah. A lot of partnerships simply come to an end.”

  Gahrah reached for the desk phone without hesitation. He speed-dialed a number and put it on speaker.

  “Yes?” said the voice on the other end.

  Gahrah said, “Do it.”

  The director hit the mute button and watched Dickson. He heard someone tell Angie to pull over.

  “Who is that?” Dickson asked.

  “Hasan Shatri,” Gahrah said. “He is making the rounds today with your daughter.”

  “Why?”

  “Learning the route,” Gahrah replied. “I had no choice, you see. Your daughter gave her notice today. I believe she was going to discuss it with you this evening.”