In Fallon’s case his ‘hook’ was his eagerness to finish his boat and get away sailing, after years of working steadily toward that goal. Once he accepted that his bank accounts and his passport could be frozen at their whim, Fallon would come aboard, the veteran ATF agent was certain of it.
“So what’s it like sailing across an ocean on something like that? You could never get me on one. Fishing on the bay is all the ocean I can handle.” This was just an ice breaker; he knew that Fallon was still somewhat in shock.
Brad was slightly disarmed by the innocent question. “It’s not for everybody. But it beats the nine-to-five and a house in the suburbs, at least for me.”
“Oh give me the suburbs any day. I just wish I could cut back to nine to five! Okay Fallon, here’s the deal: you want to go sailing, and we want you to help us for a little while. If you help us, I’m sure that we’ll find that no investigation is needed into your assault rifles. We’ll give you a clean bill of health, forget we ever heard of you, and you’ll be on your merry way. If you try to move your money offshore before that, you’ll find that it’s been blocked. Screw with us, and you’ll find out what it’s like to live in a six by nine cage. That’s just the facts of life Brad, those are the ground rules.
“Now what we want you to do is get close to the folks on this list. You’re a big deal shooter and hunter, so they’ll trust you. All of these guys belong to the Black Water Rod and Gun Club, which is a cover for a secret anti-government militia group. There’s no formal membership roster, no dues, and the members come and go, but these men here seem to be the core.
“The club was formed right here in Suffolk in the 80’s, but it really grew in the mid 90’s. That was the same time that most of the open militias were fading away or moving underground after Oklahoma City. Most of the members of this ‘club’ are ex-military, most of them own and shoot assault rifles, most of them have four wheel drive trucks and a lot of them have boats. We want to know what connection they had to Shifflett and the Stadium Massacre, and if they have plans to commit any more terrorist acts in the future.
“That’s it. Now here’s where you come in. Most Friday nights some of them have what passes for a meeting in the back room at Lester’s Diner in Highpoint. They eat dinner and drink a lot of coffee, and then they pile into their trucks and go off into the swamps to shoot some damn animals or something. We want you to meet them at Lester’s and buddy up to them. We just want you to get an invitation to do whatever the hell it is they do. They’ve seen you around town for a while; they’ve seen you at the range, so it won’t be a problem. We know how these groups operate. Any shooting or fishing or hunting that comes along, you want to go, tag along. That’s it. Easy stuff. Then you call and tell me about it. Any questions?”
****
Brad had too many questions to count, but settled for, “What’s your name? Who do you work for?”
“Yeah right! You can just call me George, and I work for your government. Any more questions?”
Brad was studying George’s face, committing the small blue eyes and sprinkling of old acne scars and bent nose to his memory. He thought he had heard his last name but could not remember it. “H” something. If he ever met “George” on equal footing in the future, free of coercion and official blackmail, he wanted to deal with him personally. Threatening his freedom and his boat was threatening the very core of Brad’s existence.
“No, no questions.”
“So that’s it then, we’ll be in touch. Use this cell phone to contact us at any time. Just hit star twenty nine, and a duty officer will contact Gibson or me. Identify yourself as Bradley Fallon, and one of us will call you back. The phone has unlimited minutes on Uncle Sam’s dime, so feel free to use it for any calls you want to make in the fifty states. Remember star twenty nine gets us 24/7, but don’t call at night unless it can’t wait, like if you hear of any plans for violence. Okay? You can get out now, we’ll be in touch.
“And remember Brad: if you screw with us in any way, we’ll screw you for good. We’re not messing around: domestic terrorism is serious business, just like the Muslim kind.”
Brad opened the door and stepped down with the cell phone and a large manila mailing envelope containing the names, addresses, brief biographical sketches and photos of the gun club members. The other agents who were relaxing on Brad’s boat climbed off onto the dock and smirked at him as they passed, then they got into the Suburban and it went crunching back out the oyster shell driveway. He watched it until it was gone from sight, and he continued to stare after it until he could no longer hear its tires on the oyster shells.
“Shit…shit…shit…” thought Brad, climbing aboard his boat. Guajira’s companionway hatch padlock had been cut and was laying in the cockpit well. They were very up front about invading his private property; they didn’t even bother to toss the broken lock overboard. He looked below; he could see that his boat had been searched. Nothing looked broken and there was no obvious malicious damage; no slit cushions, no broken locker doors, so at least they hadn’t been in a foul mood. Just a friendly warrantless search to demonstrate their disregard for the Constitution, and their complete power over him. The only weapons he had on the boat were standard bolt action rifles, not covered by the new law, and his Smith and Wesson .44 magnum. The rifles were still safe in their hidden locker, but Brad could tell they had been removed and handled and then replaced. Brad figured that if they meant for him to infiltrate a gun club, they knew he’d need his guns.
He climbed back into the cockpit and lay on his back staring up through the oak branches at the sky, as beams of sunlight flickered through the shifting leaves. They really have me by the balls, he thought. He knew that he could not ignore their demands. Randy Weaver had tried that approach with a BATF blackmail operation and refused to turn informant, and in the end the feds killed his son and his wife for his defiance. They shot his young son in the back, and they shot his wife through the head while she was holding a baby in her kitchen. The new federal police had somewhere crossed the line and become a super mafia. When they offered you a deal, you couldn’t refuse.
After 9-11 the feds permitted themselves to go after foreigners in the U.S.A. without regard for normal due process, all in the name of fighting the “War on Terror.” Now the War on Terror, with its special rules and constitutional exemptions, was being widened to include American citizens under “domestic terrorism.” The cut padlock left flippantly as an insult on Guajira’s cockpit floor told Brad that much in clear language.
Now in the wake of the Stadium Massacre, Brad had no doubt that the feds would extend the same harsh war-time measures against any suspected “militia” terrorists, that they had taken against suspected Islamic terrorists, who had been rounded up and put into secret detention facilities without any trial. Ignoring the feds’ demands was not an option. As the famous phrase had put it, “You are either with us, or with the terrorists.”
Twenty miles up this river on a mastless sailboat Brad felt as helpless as a turtle flipped on its back: trapped and vulnerable.
But Brad Fallon had one slight edge which had not shown up on the FBI’s computer screens, one stealth weapon which did not show on their radar scope: he was something of a self-taught student of espionage, law enforcement and special warfare techniques. During his long months working on the ANWR, he had devoured literally hundreds of paperback novels, biographies and histories. During his stints in Alaska he worked twelve on, twelve off, seven days a week. Informal paperback libraries in the dormitories were well stocked with the works of LeCarre, Seymour, Ignatius and many others. There were also plentiful non-fiction works covering every dirty war and covert operation from Southeast Asia to Northern Ireland, and from Central America to the Middle East.
By analyzing and comparing the information in these books he had developed a strong instinct for determining what was critical fact, and what was hyperbolic nonsense. His informal education in special warfare and covert intellige
nce operations would not register on George’s biography sheet, an advantage which Brad hoped to use if he could.
Brad had not developed an affinity for reading about espionage and clandestine operations by accident. For years he had watched the federal government’s rising tide of well-meant tyrannical power, which always tightened one click of the handcuff ratchet at a time on American freedom, without ever reversing direction or loosening. First in the name of the “War on Drugs,” and then in the name of the “War on Terror,” the federal law enforcement agencies had carved out their own special rules of engagement. In the name of national security, these rules superseded and bypassed the Bill of Rights where ever it stood in the way.
For the sake of expediency, pleading dire emergency, exceptions and exemptions were granted to federal law enforcement agencies, but the “exceptions” then quickly became the accepted norms. Each new graduating class of agents came into the federal law enforcement world learning that they were somehow above the Bill of Rights, because their calling was higher, and their mission too important, to be hamstrung by strict adherence to outdated rules of legal conduct.
Brad could connect the dots into the future: he had studied the pattern in many nations where the secret police gradually became empowered to break the law with impunity, and for a long time he had seen the same trends at work in America. Years ago he had wanted to become a Navy SEAL, in order to learn the dark trades from the inside. That plan had been torpedoed in the hyperbaric dive chamber when the Navy doctors discovered he had no taste for pure oxygen at a simulated depth of sixty feet.
So Brad did the best he could by teaching himself, and so he used his off-duty time in Alaska reading everything he could find on spies, commandos, and terrorists. Now that he was planning to become a world traveling sailor, Brad considered a sophisticated understanding of how secret police agencies worked to be an important tool for avoiding the kinds of mistakes which could cause his boat to be seized, or himself to be tossed in a foreign jail. In most nations, and increasingly in America, it was becoming crucial to be able to discern where the actual lines of power ran, as opposed to the overt public lines. The public lines of authority were often public lies, just polite window dressing, and often a trap for the naïve and unwary.
He had expected to use his special knowledge to help him to navigate through the Byzantine channels of third world politics, to tell him when to shut up and pay the mordida bribe, and when to demand his rights; when to seek a local patron, and when to pull up anchor and flee in the night.
Brad understood very well that the world was increasingly becoming more complex and dangerous for the serious traveler. He just didn’t foresee that he would be trapped by secret police right here in America, before he could even cross his first ocean on Guajira!
One thing he knew for certain was that the standard retirement plan for a dirty war informant was a rural safe house torture session, followed by a bullet in the brain and being dumped in a roadside ditch. The Black Water Rod and Gun Club might or might not be a cover for a secret militia group, but if they were, he was dead certain they would immediately suspect him, the stranger, if he suddenly showed a desire to follow them on their outings.
In fact, his position would be so exposed and obvious that he felt fairly sure that there must already be a government informant in the club, and that he was intentionally being dangled as a cover for the existing spy. If bad things suddenly began to happen to members of the gun club, suspicion would immediately fall on Brad Fallon, leaving the real informer or informers undiscovered and unsuspected. Fallon thought that he would most likely be playing the role of the feds’ intentional sacrificial pawn, a common last role for a duped informant.
Brad was not going to pull a Randy Weaver and refuse the feds outright. He didn’t want to have his money seized or his boat sunk at the dock, or to wind up living in a six by nine cage. But neither would he become an informant. He had just over twenty-four hours to come up with an alternate plan.
He picked up his broken padlock and threw it far out into the river, where it made a soft thunking splash and disappeared.
5
George Hammet was riding shotgun in the front of the FBI’s black Suburban, on their thirty mile drive back from Suffolk to the federal building in downtown Norfolk. The three FBI Special Agents with him were among the fifty or so federal law enforcement agents rushed into the area to augment the Tidewater end of the MD-Rifle investigation. Local FBI and ATF agents were riding with new arrivals to familiarize them with the area. The visit to Highpoint had primarily been an orientation run for them. In the morning they had toured Shifflett’s trailer, and conducted field interviews of Cecil Towers and several other Highpoint residents, but without indicating any interest in the Black Water Rod and Gun Club.
The task of actually making the recruitment pitch to Fallon had been given to the ATF’s George Hammet because he was assigned locally, and would run the new “militia informant” long after the Joint Task Force had departed. The FBI’s own high-profile Counter Terrorism Division was focused primarily on foreign based Islamic terrorist cells. The ATF was left with the less glamorous task of investigating domestic “militias” and other mostly right wing groups, because these investigations were often based on firearms law infractions.
From the front seat Hammet turned to the others and said, “One more stop and we’ll call it a day. We’re going to visit a gun store for a compliance check. You can see the kind of crap ATF is up against every day. Take a right after the Union 76, then head south on 32.”
Virginia State Road 32 was a two-lane blacktop cutting due south through pine trees and soybean fields, with asphalt heat mirages shimmering in the distance. “That’s the place up there on the left,” said Hammet. The gun store was a white one-story cinderblock building set behind a gravel parking lot. An American flag flapped softly atop a pole out front. “FREEDOM ARMS” was painted in blue letters across the top of the building above the front door and a pair of windows. Behind the store across a football field sized yard was the owner’s tan-colored one story ranch-style house. Pine woods bordered a wire fence around the yard and behind the house.
There was a jeep, a pickup truck and a motorcycle parked in front of the store. The muffled staccato popping of a handgun could be heard from within, someone shooting on the indoor range. Virginia was a “right to carry” state and many of the citizens who carried a licensed concealed handgun practiced regularly.
A heavy wrought-iron burglar gate was latched back against the building, allowing access through a plate glass door. The two small windows in the front of the structure were set high and covered with iron bars. From the outside the place looked almost like a small bank.
The four federal agents got out, adjusted their jackets over their concealed pistols, and went inside. Decals from firearms and reloading supply companies were stuck all over the glass door. Cowbells jingled and a chime rang when the door was opened. Inside the store the air conditioning was refreshingly chilly. A young man, perhaps a military reservist judging by his haircut and demeanor, stood behind a long glass-cased counter talking to a wiry older customer who was wearing jeans and boots and a black Harley Davidson t-shirt and leather vest. Out of sight, another string of shots was fired on the indoor range. Typical for a gun store, the young man behind the counter was wearing a holstered pistol on a wide leather belt. George Hammet noted his pistol, and it occurred to him that he could not remember a single case of a gun store ever being robbed during business hours. Hammet never connected this fact to any larger issues involving citizens being allowed to carry firearms more generally.
The three FBI men browsed through the crowded non-firearms merchandise display areas, examining holsters, books, boxes of various calibers of ammunition and other shooting accessories, all while discreetly watching Hammet handle the “compliance visit.” As it would be expected of FBI agents, all of them were at least proficient with firearms. They carried their own .40 caliber p
istols in shoulder rigs or belt holsters hidden under their jackets. They all considered themselves “shooters” and bore no particular animosity toward the owners of gun stores, since they were themselves frequent customers in them. Gun stores were strictly the ATF’s beat as far as the FBI agents were concerned.
On one knotty-pine paneled wall there was a large black and white poster of Adolf Hitler with bull’s-eye rings printed over him. Hitler had his arm raised high in a stiff Nazi salute. Across the poster, “All those in favor of gun control, raise your right hand,” was written in large Germanic letters. In smaller print was written, “After Hitler was elected Chancellor in 1933, the Nazis used existing German gun registration lists to disarm the Jews. The rest is history.”
One young FBI agent pointed the poster out to his colleagues and they all chuckled. FBI agents generally looked down on their ATF cousins, referring to them as the BATF and now the BATFE. The ATF agents had a serious inferiority complex and wanted to be considered a first-tier “three letter agency” like the CIA, FBI, DEA and NSA, and never referred to themselves as the BATF or BATFE. The BATF had spent sixty years within the Treasury Department as glorified tax collectors, or “revenuers,” before most of their law enforcement functions were transferred over to the Justice Department, following the homeland security reorganizations in the wake of 9-11.
Enemies Foreign And Domestic Page 6
