Myrmidon

CHAPTER THREE

They had gotten very lucky, in the end, though every run of luck eventually runs dry. Chapel and Angel had worked up a simple briefing on the situation, and now Chapel had her bring it up on a flatscreen in Hollingshead’s office. Hollingshead already knew much of what Chapel was about to present, but he wanted to go over it again anyway, if only to show how much progress they’d already made.

“Favorov told us where the guns went,” Chapel said. Ygor Favorov, a KGB agent, had been the main conduit for the assault rifles, smuggling them into the country, then selling them to various paramilitary groups. It had taken some convincing, but Chapel had eventually gotten the man to confess everything. “It was a pretty wide spread, originally.” On the screen, a map of the United States came up. Red dots appeared in several states. “These are the groups who bought guns from Favorov, and you can see they went all over the East Coast and through California. Most of the weapons ended up being stockpiled—the groups who bought from Favorov never actually fired most of them—and they were seized in police raids over the years.” One by one, the red dots flickered off the map. “The seized guns were all destroyed and no longer pose a threat. The ones that remain were all sold in the last ten years, during which time Favorov dealt exclusively with white-supremacist groups, most of them out West.” The red dots were almost gone now, except for one each in Montana, Arizona, and Colorado. “In 2006, this group, the New White Brotherhood, in Montana, was broken up by agents from the Department of Homeland Security, while in 2009, an ATF sting rounded up this group, the Arizona 88 Society, and all of their guns. Those guns haven’t been destroyed—they’re being held as evidence in ongoing legal actions. We can’t touch them without raising a stink, but Angel had a solution there. The serial numbers of the guns were held in an ATF database. She was able to hack in and change all the numbers, so that anyone who looks for where those guns came from will find they were sold through Mexican organized crime, not directly from Russia.”

“Clever,” Hollingshead said. “Are you thinking of using the same trick for this last cache?” He nodded at the screen, where only one red dot remained, in Colorado.

“I wish we could,” Chapel told him. “Unfortunately, the ATF hasn’t gotten around to cracking down on that group. They’ve tried, but so far, they have nothing to hang a case on. That’s the Separatist Allied Front, and as far as anyone knows, they’ve never committed a crime.”

“Really?” Hollingshead asked.

Chapel shrugged. “Ninety per cent of their members have some kind of criminal record, but every rap sheet I checked showed that the crimes stopped the second they joined the group. There are plenty of lawsuits against the SAF, but they’re all for libel or hate speech, and it looks like very few of them will hold up in court. There’s not so much as a single firearms violation associated with the SAF.”

“And yet they were clearly one of Favorov’s best clients. Don’t most groups like this sell drugs or guns to fund themselves?”

Chapel nodded. “Yes, but the SAF doesn’t seem to have taken that route. They produce hate literature and sell survivalist supplies—you know, six months’ worth of freeze-dried food, plans for how to build a bunker in your backyard. Some of the books they sell are pretty disgusting, but the First Amendment protects their right to print what they like. They have their hands in a number of other perfectly legitimate businesses as well. Most prominently, they have a factory that makes machine parts for motorcycles and small aircraft.” The view on the screen changed, this time to show a satellite image of the SAF compound in Colorado. Against a tan background of low, desert hills, a sprawling cluster of buildings stood out—houses and a couple churches, but also the dark rectangles of factory buildings. “They have warehouses here, here, and here, any one of which would be perfect for storing the guns in the middle of crates of machine parts. But nobody from law enforcement has ever been in one of those buildings.”

“The ATF must have their suspicions,” Hollingshead suggested.

Chapel nodded. “They keep tabs on every white-power group in the country, just on principle. Three times in the last ten years, they’ve tried to place an undercover agent in the SAF compound, but it’s never worked. That’s mostly because of this man.”

On the screen, a picture of a middle-aged man appeared. He had a rugged face, not too handsome, but his sharp features gave him a striking look. His eyes were a piercing gray that seemed to look out of the screen in silent judgment.

“Terry Belcher. The head of the SAF and, from all accounts, the charismatic leader of the group. SAF members worship the man. He vets every new recruit personally, and so far he’s caught every ATF plant before they could even get through the front gate.”

“What have you found out about him?” Hollingshead asked.

“He’s white-power royalty, basically. His father was Kendred Belcher, who was a ranking member in the KKK until he split with them in the eighties because he felt they were more interested in media attention than direct action. Kendred wrote one of the seminal books that influences white-power movements to this day. Originally, Terry Belcher here rejected his father’s teachings. He split with his father’s group and joined the armed forces, intending to put white-power politics behind him.”

“Dare I ask which branch of service?” Hollingshead asked.

“The army,” Chapel said, though he hated to admit it. “He fought in the First Gulf War. Afterward, he was dishonorably discharged for beating his CO nearly to death. He did a short prison term for assault and was released in 1998. I don’t know what changed his mind, but after he got out of prison, he seems to have embraced his father’s teachings once again. He’s been putting the SAF together, piece by piece, ever since, and now he’s built quite the empire. Officially, he preaches nonviolent protest against the government. He was quoted in a magazine interview as approving of domestic terrorists, however—he once said that Timothy McVeigh was the greatest American patriot since Ethan Allen. His message seems to appeal to a certain kind of man—typically, people who belonged to groups that have already been wiped out by the ATF or other federal agencies. The best report we have suggests that Terry Belcher commands a group of nearly two thousand white supremacists, almost all of them living and working on his compound.”

“And now he has enough guns to arm them all,” Hollingshead said.

Chapel nodded. “We need to get me inside that compound. The original plan,” he said, being careful—it had been Hollingshead’s plan, after all—“was for me to pose as a disaffected white supremacist looking for something new to believe in. I was supposed to sneak in there, find the guns, and blow them up. But I don’t think I could have done that successfully, sir. Terry Belcher would have had to approve my joining the group. And I believe he would see right through me.”

“So what is your solution—if I may be so bold as to ask?”

Chapel took a deep breath. “Sir, you know I was taught by the best instructors the Army Rangers had. They told me one thing I’ve always held to be axiomatic—if the enemy is attacking from the left, strike from the right. If they believe you can only hurt them one way, show them you can think outside the box. Do the opposite of what they expect.”

Hollingshead raised an eyebrow.

“Terry Belcher expects his organization to be infiltrated by an undercover agent. He’s been working at preventing that for years, and he’s built an exceptional defense against that kind of attack. He’s also expecting an ATF raid at some point. I think he stockpiled all those guns to be ready when a massive force of agents shows up at his front door. He’s ready to fight that kind of war, too. So I needed to find the one method of attack he’s not ready for, the one thing he would never expect.”

“Let me guess,” Hollingshead said. “You’re going to walk up, ring his doorbell, and ask if you can have all of his guns.”

Chapel had to remind himself to breathe.

“Well…” he began.