Terror At Dawn

SEVENTEEN

“No kidding,” Greenfield said into the phone, and his tone of voice caught Tombstone’s attention immediately. He left the aerial charts he was looking at and walked over to the corner of the room that had been designated as Greenfield’s office. There was a look of concentration on the man’s face as he listened, as though every atom of his being was devoted to straining out every morsel of information from the conversation. His side of the call had that peculiarly stilted rhythm of someone who’s the recipient of news. “Where?” A long pause, then, “When?” Finally, a look of grim pleasure spread across Greenfield’s face and he said, “How do we get there?”

He turned to Tombstone, something in his bearing making him look like a very dangerous man. “We got them. At least part of them. If you still have any connections in the government, you better pull them now. And later on, too, because one very tough, smart cop from Butte just saved us a hell of a lot of trouble.”

Abraham Carter and his men parked their vehicles a safe way from the compound and followed the well-concealed trail back to HQ. As they approached the front entrance, he saw a small figure seated on the porch, alone and apparently unarmed. He motioned most of the men into concealment and went forward with only one other man.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice said, confident and sure of her welcome. “I’ve been waiting for you. I’m Pamela Drake.” Behind her, her cameraman held out his hands, palm up, to show he was unarmed.

Thirty minutes later, after Drake had proffered an entirely fabricated story of her success in locating them, Carter holstered his pistol. “Okay. You’re here. For now.” He turned to face his men and continued. “You all know what we’re up against. There’s a good chance they’re onto us now. Or least, we have indications that they are.” No one questioned that statement. They all knew that the organization far above their level had agents planted in every federal law-enforcement agency.

“You think you’ll have to make a stand here?” Drake asked.

Carter shot her an annoyed look. “Maybe. They’ll know the trucks and weapons are missing. If they find out we’re here, they’ll make the connection.”

There were some murmurs of agreement, and then they fell silent. “So what do we do?” one asked.

“We wait until Jackson gets the trucks here or until we hear from him. Then we move out.”

“And if the Feds turn up?” Drake persisted.

“We hold them off long enough for the trucks to get away, if it comes to that. It won’t be an easy thing. They’ll likely have helicopters and air assets to help track them, probably infrared as well.”

“What are the odds they’ll come here?” another asked.

“I don’t know.” He glanced outside. The sky was already starting to lighten. “But I think we’ll find out soon.”

Greenfield snapped his cell phone shut. Tombstone was still not accustomed to the wolfish expression the man’s face had taken on. “What is it?”

“Our Butte cop. He managed to snag a ride on one of the trucks and took down the driver. Jumped out the back just before it rolled over. The driver is still alive, but just barely. The cop’s okay.”

“Where?”

“About twenty miles from here, out on a pretty isolated road. The other truck started to come back to look, but evidently it changed its mind and headed east. The state fellows are scrambling now.”

“Patrol cars?”

Greenfield nodded. “Air, too, as soon as they can get the birds warmed up. Be nice if we could avoid scaring these guys off and find out where they’re headed.” He glanced at his watch. “Every second we wait is going to make it harder to find them. The country out here…” He let his voice trail off, indicating the rugged landscape around him. “Mountains, ravines, caves are everywhere. They could disappear real easily.”

“Let’s not wait for them,” Tombstone said. “We’ve got those air assets lined up, right? They’re supposed to be on fifteen-minute standby — let’s just see how well the reserves can put their money where their mouth is.” He turned to the operations officer, who he knew had had some aviation experience. “You talked to the air reserve center?”

The man nodded. “It’s an Air National Guard unit about thirty miles from here. They said they have helicopter and surface-search aircraft on standby.”

“Get them airborne. Coordinate an intercept vector with Greenfield.” Tombstone caught himself — he had almost said, “the XO.”

“Can do.” The operations officer snapped open his cell phone, consulted a scrap of paper, and a punched in a telephone number. He walked away from the two men to talk to the air reserve operations officer on the other end.

“Pretty nice,” Greenfield said grudgingly. “Air assets, all the manpower you want — hell, I bet we could even submit a pretty fancy restaurant bill on your expense account.”

Tombstone regarded him steadily. “And you’re thinking that if you had had this much support, Bull Run would have gone differently.”

The warrior look faded from Greenfield’s face. Suddenly, he looked years older. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He stared off into space, as though watching the operation unfold again. “I had enough assets on site — more than enough. It was the intelligence that sucked.”

“Speaking of intelligence, who took the trucks?” Tombstone asked. “Any idea?”

Greenfield shrugged, clearly putting the Bull Run incident away. “It could be a number of folks. From the style of it, it could be the Carters. We think they’ve been involved in a number of weapons raids and it’s always a middle-of-the-night, paramilitary sort of thing. Camouflage uniforms, the whole nine yards. Most of the other militias just pilfer the stuff. Out in this part of the country, they have enough contacts to make that happen. They usually don’t have to kill people to get what they want.”

“Pilfer?”

“They steal it. They all have people inside the active duty and reserve organizations. How hard is it to make stuff disappear?” Greenfield’s voice held a note of bitterness. “So, yeah, my money is on the Carters.”

“So where do you think they’re headed?” Tombstone asked.

“I don’t know. That’s why we need to find that other truck. They probably have a base camp somewhere and eventually that’s where they’ll go. They need bodies to carry the guns.”

Bratton strolled up, a look of mild interest on his face. “Lands End, probably.”

“Lands End what?” Tombstone asked. Greenfield simply scowled.

“Lands End, Idaho. They have a base camp there. Sort of a training facility — it’s been up and running about six months now. Abraham Carter was headed up there yesterday, so if Junior is running, that’s where I bet he will head.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?” Tombstone asked.

“Because—” Bratton started

“Because,” Greenfield interrupted, his voice harsh, “sharing information doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to the CIA as it does to you and me. Before this, it wasn’t relevant, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Bratton said calmly.

“And now it is,” Tombstone said.

“That’s it exactly.” Bratton nodded his head. “Sharing information doesn’t mean dumping everything we have in front of you. It means that when we’ve got something that’s pertinent to your operation, we let you know, if we can do so without endangering an agent’s life.”

“You have someone inside the organization?” Greenfield asked. Bratton did not answer.

I see how it is. They’re going to cooperate, but not go out of their way unless they have to. Tombstone filed that bit of information away for later discussion with the CIA agent. Out loud, he asked, “Do you know the layout of this Lands End?”

Bratton nodded. “Here.” He passed over a few pieces of paper with drawings on them, diagrams of an area of land and an interior diagram of a house. “We can probably get in relatively unobserved coming in this way,” he said, tracing out a route through the woods behind the house. “But it’s a long haul — it runs right along the base of these mountains and would be pretty easy to keep under observation. Going over the mountains isn’t practical, and the other approaches are all clear-cut. We can get there, but whether we can do it covertly is a big question mark.”

“OK, that’s it,” Tombstone said. “For now, we’ll operate on the assumption that the Carters were behind the reserve center raid. Ops, get our air assets looking for that truck. Greenfield, call off the state boys — I don’t want them spooking that truck.” He raised his voice slightly. “Bug out, folks. I want everything critical packed and in the vehicles in fifteen minutes. We’re headed for Lands End.”

“And then we wait,” Greenfield added. “This time, we wait.”

Jackson Carter pounded on the window that separated him from the truck’s cab. It slid back and he shouted, “Take the next left! We need to get this stuff in the caves and get to HQ.”

The driver said nothing. Jackson studied the road behind him, searching for any sign of pursuit. “OK, keep a sharp eye out, but I think we’ve lost them. Another twenty minutes, and we’ll be at the cave. Ten minutes to off-load and then we’re history.” Jackson put his head back and let loose a loud, fierce war cry.

Finally, Jackson stopped his howling. Mertz had a sickly smile pasted on his face. “This is just the beginning, buddy,” Jackson said. “This is just the beginning.”