The Program

Chapter fifty-two

The marshal screeched over on the side of Little Tujunga near the dirt road that twisted up the hills to the ranch. Tim leapt out before the Bronco stopped. Two Expeditions, a rusty Pathfinder, Freed's Porsche, Bear's Ram, and six black-and-whites from the La Crescenta Sheriff's Station crammed the dirt turnoff. More vehicles stretched up the roadside, including the Service's armored personnel carrier, a military peace-keeper they'd dubbed the Pacemaker for all its hours in the shop. Painted black right down to the bulletproof turret, the APC looked like a Humvee on steroids. Tim had requested it over the Beast in case the flooded creek a mile up the road still proved treacherous.

Miller stood with one foot on the running board of the APC, the deputies and geared-up ART members circled around him. Chomper poked at Bear with his snout until he lowered a hand to scratch behind his ears.

Denley was emerging from his wife's teal Saturn and taking a good ribbing for it.

Tim ran over, warrants triumphantly raised over his head, flapping in the wind. Miller snatched them from his hand, squinting to read them in the dusk.

The station captain, a box-headed ex-Marine who went by Duke, glanced over Miller's shoulder. "What's the fire? We could've served these tomorrow."

"Leah Henning moled out the evidence for the warrants." Tim held up Leah's graduation photo, the one from Will's wallet, and the men handed it around the circle. "She got caught."

Duke took note of his expression, snapped his chin down in a nod. "Right."

"You see this girl, you bring her to me. Got it?"

Bear tossed Tim a vest, and he zipped it over his T-shirt as he introduced himself to the sheriff's deputies. Owen B. Rutherford nodded at him severely from the back. Though Tim had alerted him largely as a courtesy and he'd have to wait back at the staging point with Dray and Tannino, Rutherford was fully decked out – raid jacket, shotgun, shoulder-slung MP5, Beretta, gold-and-blue postal inspector badge dangling from a chain around his neck. Mail defilers beware.

Tannino jogged over, Dray at his heels, then assessed the crew.

Miller glanced at his watch. "Thomas is en route."

Duke said, "The secondary is up, but we can't get airtight around the rear boundary given the terrain. We'd like to get a few more units positioned -"

"We don't have time," Tim said.

Duke looked at Miller, and Miller shrugged.

The Lincoln Navigator skidded up, and Will, Rooch, and Doug hopped out. Tannino snapped his fingers for them to stay put away from the briefing area.

Miller jerked his head at the Navigator. "Who bought the senator's boyfriend front-row tickets?"

"He did," Tannino said. "Don't worry – I'll babysit him at the staging point."

Tim's lip tingled along the scar, an itch too deep to scratch. "Where's the dog?"

A soft-voiced deputy with a droopy mustache pointed to a leonine German shepherd gazing forlornly from the passenger window of a Volvo. "That there's Cosmo. She's L.A. Sheriff's and OES cadaver-certified."

Miller tossed the deputy a Racal portable. "Channel forty-eight. Make sure you don't break in if she alerts over a dead squirrel."

The deputy bobbed his head. His name tag announced him as Danner. "Don't you worry 'bout no dead squirrels. Cosmo's like that squinty little bastard from The Sixth Sense. She howls, there's a corpse talkin' to her."

A few of the deputies chuckled.

"How many people are up there?" Denley asked.

"Could be seventy, probably less," Tim said. "We busted up their last meeting, so I hope we knocked loose the fence-sitters."

"So what's left are hard-line zealots eager to die for Allah."

"Remember, we're just serving a warrant here. It's our job to make sure this doesn't spin up."

"Tell that to the David Koresh motherfucker," one of the deputies said.

Tannino stuck his head into the circle. "This thing goes Ruby Ridge, I will personally chew off your ass."

The deputy's grin faded.

Miller had ordered some of the deputies to carry less-lethal. Bear handed around the Remington 870s, the clear rounds showing off the stuffed beanbags inside. Maybeck shouldered the big-bore launcher and dug in the APC for pepper-spray canisters.

A county fire ambulance pulled up, red light strobing through the darkening air. Miller gestured at them, and the driver nodded, cutting the lights and idling at the curb. Law-enforcement and emergency-response vehicles crowded Little Tujunga. Drivers were starting to rubberneck.

Duke and his deputies peeled out to shore up the secondary perimeter, leaving behind four units to join the caravan of vehicles to the front gate.

Thomas jogged up the road, ballistic helmet under one arm, waving what looked like a rolled blueprint. "Sorry. I stopped off at the barn to grab the topograph for the ranch."

Miller stretched out the blueprint and squatted over it.

The ART members were heating up, checking shotgun slides, testing the portables, changing out flashlight batteries.

For a moment Tim took it all in – the vehicles jammed along the road, Denley snugging his goggles into place, the grind of steel-plated boots into dirt, the smell of gun oil, the big-barreled shotgun breach-broken over Maybeck's arm, Guerrera tugging on thin black gloves, the splotches of dried sweat staining the tactical vests, Bear thumbing round after round into his magazine.

Tim came out of his reverie, and everyone was staring at him, stacked back three deep, curved in a fat arc around the front of the