Rose City Kill Zone Read online

  “Here you can see the death squad sent to my friend’s ranch using military tactics,” Marshall narrated as the video showed Dale and me shooting and throwing the smoke grenade. “I ask you, is this Iraq or the United States, a land of free people?”

  The video cut to a picture of Stuckey’s corpse laying on the ground with a gaping wound in his forehead.

  “This is our innocent ranch hand, cut down by the jackbooted thugs the government sent to harass us.”

  “I can’t believe you shot Stuckey,” Casey said.

  “He didn’t,” Dale said. “That’s an exit wound. Also the guy Dent shot was wearing camo. Stuckey is wearing work clothes, and there are blood stains on them, so he was wearing them when he was shot.”

  “He must have told them about us, and they executed him,” I said.

  “Yup,” Dale said.

  On screen, the picture cut away to Henderson Marshall standing in front of the flagpole at Freedom Ranch.

  “This is the time for patriots to unite!” Marshall said, holding a rifle over his head. “I’m asking all free men of good character to report for duty. It’s time to stand up to the beast that our government has become and strike a blow for freedom!”

  “What the hell?”I said.

  “The video has received over a thousand views in the last hour,” Henry said. “I’ve been monitoring the comments section.”

  “I’m sorry,” Casey said.

  “Yeah. I feel like my IQ is lower. Anyway, over a dozen groups have responded and pledged help. The Sons of Freedom. Some white supremacists from Idaho. A Ku Klux Klan chapter from Northern California. A bunch of individuals.”

  “What’s his angle?” I asked.

  “Our psych profile suggests that Marshall has started to see himself in an almost messianic light since his son was killed,” Bolle said. Eyes shifted uncomfortably around the room. I was the one responsible for Marshall’s son’s death.

  “He genuinely believes he’s going to ignite a political movement that is going to take the country by storm and change things to look the way he wants,” Bolle continued. “He may be intent on going out in a blaze of glory, with the whole world watching.”

  “What about all the other people? Webb? All those security people” Alex asked from over in the corner. She’d barely greeted me when I came in.

  Bolle shrugged. “We don’t have a handle on them. Some of them may be motivated by similar ideology, some of them may be motivated by the millions of dollars in cash sitting in that airplane.”

  “What a shit sandwich,” I said. I replayed the ambush in the woods in my mind. There was nothing we could have done differently.

  “Yes,” Bolle said. “The FBI will be here tonight to assume on-scene command.”

  “I’m not sure if that makes me feel better,” I said.

  Nobody seemed inclined to argue with that.

  For the rest of the day, we watched a caravan of pickup trucks, RV’s, motorcycles and even one guy on horseback show up at Freedom Ranch. People started live streaming video from the ranch, showing lots of overweight dudes wearing cheap camo clothes and carrying rifles walking around and setting up defensive positions. From our surveillance cameras, we saw Webb reposition his security people in a ring around the airplane hangar, while the newcomers spread out all over the ranch.

  The main thing we watched for was a vehicle departing the ranch via the newly graded road. We were dead certain that somebody would try to make their escape with at least part of the money, either by the road, or via the light aircraft parked outside the hangar. We rolled the Little Bird out of the barn, unfolded the blades, and attached the bench seats to the sides, intending to intercept any escape attempts by air, Burke’s orders to not apprehend anyone be damned. I sat in the air-conditioned trailer with all my gear on and tried to nap, standing by in case somebody made a run for it with some portion of the hundred million dollars hidden in the plane or truck.

  But all the traffic was into the ranch, none of it went out.

  After dark, I took off all my commando gear and drove into Lehigh Valley with Bolle. The town middle school had been designated as the command post, and it was a madhouse. The parking lot was full of unmarked government sedans and SUVs. A pair of Lenco Bearcat armored cars sat on trailers, guarded by a couple of guys in FBI windbreakers toting assault rifles. Everywhere I looked, I saw lean, fit people wearing tactical pants and polo shirts that did a poor job of covering pistols on their belts.

  “I don’t see any nuclear weapons, so they must be keeping a low profile,” I said.

  Bolle just shook his head. The guard at the door scrutinized our credentials, made a couple of phone calls and finally, we were led inside the gymnasium, where dozens of tables holding communications gear, computers, and whiteboards had been set up.

  The HRT commander was a guy named Roger Laughlin, and he looked at Bolle and me like we smelled bad

  “We’re serving the warrant tomorrow at 0800. I understand your people have an observation post set up on a ridge?”

  “We do,” Bolle said. “I…”

  Laughlin cut him off. “You can put some of your people up there if you want. If you see anything of interest, report it on the secondary radio net. Stay off the primary.”

  With that he turned on his heel and walked off, leaving me and Bolle standing there like two dismissed schoolboys. When I looked at Bolle out of the corner of my eye, I could see he was white. He had his fists clenched at his sides and they were trembling.

  Without a word to me, he walked out of the room and marched back to the car, back ramrod straight, head straight ahead. I had to almost jog to keep up with him. He sat in the passenger seat and folded his arms across his chest. Wordlessly, I started the car and headed for the exit.

  Across the street from the school, a TV news truck pulled up and the hydraulic mast for a satellite antenna started going up. Apparently, we were all about to be famous.

  As we pulled out of the lot, another car pulled in. I recognized the driver as Diana. Her face was still bruised and puffy. I was pretty sure the silhouette beside her was Hubbard. I glanced over at Bolle to see if he’d noticed.

  “All the pieces are on the board,” he said.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that comment, so I let it be. We rode in silence for a few miles as I turned the situation over in my head. Finally, I spoke.

  “I think some people are going to die tomorrow,” I said.

  He nodded. “I want you and Dale up on the ridge tomorrow with the fifty. At least we can make sure it’s the right people.”

  Our little arsenal included a massive Barret fifty caliber rifle. Dale could do frightening things with it, even from a couple of miles away.

  I almost asked him why we were taking an active role in the raid, when we’d been clearly ordered not to. I wondered what the repercussions would be if we wound up shooting people, but at this point, I was past the point of caring. We’d done so much sketchy stuff already, what was one more thing?

  I found myself just wanting the whole thing to be over. Hopefully tomorrow Marshall would be either in custody or dead, and I could concentrate on having some kind of life again.

  Everyone was waiting for us in the trailer when we pulled up. Bolle briefed everyone about the plan. There was silence all around for a while.

  “That’s it?” Casey said. “We’re just going to watch?”

  “That may not be a bad thing,” Dale said. “I think those FBI boys are expecting to roll in there, wave some machine guns around and just take the place over. I’m not sure it’s going to go that way.”

  That was part of what was bothering me. It was almost like somebody wanted a confrontation.

  “Have we heard from CRYPTER?” I asked.

  Casey craned her neck over to look at the phone in its plastic bag.

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  “Should we tell him?” I asked Bolle.

  He took a deep breath and looked out the wi
ndow for a minute.

  “No. I can’t be responsible for tipping off the people at the ranch to raid.”

  I almost pointed out that since there were a hundred or so federal agents and two armored cars sitting at the local middle school, any chance of surprise was lost already, but I held my tongue. Bolle was still tense and agitated. He’d worked hard on this investigation for years, and now it was being jerked out of his hands right at the end. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I knew nothing about Bolle personally. I didn’t know if he had a wife, kids, a lover, a boyfriend, anything. We’d never talked about what would happen after we finally had Marshall in custody if he had an expectation that we were going to keep working together.

  The meeting broke up and Alex walked out of the trailer without a word. I waited for a while before leaving myself. I watched the video monitors. There were a couple of bonfires on the property and dozens of people standing around them. I couldn’t count the number of pickup trucks, camper vans and recreational vehicles that had been parked all over the grass between the ranch gate and the main house. Clearly more people had arrived while Bolle and I were in town.

  “It’s sort of like an anti-Woodstock,” Casey said as she panned the camera around.

  “Yeah. Well, hopefully, they will all eat the brown acid and will be feeling groovy when the Feds show up,” I said. I was exhausted, but still feeling restless and edgy, courtesy of unburned adrenaline left over from the fight earlier in the day. I walked outside into the fresh air and saw Rudder silhouetted in the glow of his TV. I really needed to go to bed, but I walked into the living room instead.

  There was something about Rudder I really liked. When I’d been in the Army, the D-Day Rangers had been venerated, part of the pantheon of heroes we all worshiped. I also just genuinely enjoyed being around the old fart.

  He waved at me and pointed to the extra recliner when I came into the room. Instead of the John Wayne movie I’d been hoping for, he was watching the news out of Portland. A perfectly coiffed reporter I vaguely recognized was doing a stand up in front of the Lehigh Valley Middle School.

  “Tonight the sleepy community of Lehigh valley looks like something from a war zone, with heavily armed federal agents assembling at the local middle school, and armed militants congregating at the Freedom Ranch. Earlier today, we got impressions from local residents.”

  The screen cut to footage shot earlier in the day of the reporter holding the microphone in the face of a woman in her sixties. Her hair was pulled back in a bun and she wore a work shirt and jeans.

  “Those people out at that ranch don’t represent the people of Lehigh Valley or Mueller County. They’re a bunch of radicals. We don’t need them, or a bunch of Federal Agents waving guns around either. Hopefully, all of you will just go away.”

  The reporter opened his mouth to ask a question, but she turned and walked away. The feed cut back to the live shot in front of the middle school.

  “Strong words from a local resident in this small community that is overwhelmed with tension. We’ll keep you updated as events unfold. Back to you Tom.”

  Rudder killed the sound.

  “She’s goddamn right we don’t need all this here. No offense but hope all of you will just go home soon.”

  He glanced over at me and I nodded.

  “None taken. I don’t blame you.”

  “Those people out at that ranch are a bunch of wingnuts. They bought the land cheap because old Henry Patton went bankrupt, like far too many ranchers these last few years. They thought they’d roll in here, buy a bunch of jeans, boots and cowboy hats and we’d just lap up their bullshit like a cat taking to cream. Most of us don’t have much use for you Portland people, but that doesn’t mean we are going to go marching along with this Marshall fellow either.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about being lumped in with the “Portland people,” but I could see what Rudder meant. In many ways, this place reminded me of where I grew up in Appalachia. The land was vastly different, the accents were different, and the ways people made their living were different, but what they had in common was a desire to just make a living, raise their kids, and generally be left alone. I realized I’d missed places like this. I’d never go back to Tennessee, but there was quite a bit of this country that wasn’t Tennessee but wasn’t Portland either.

  “Well, hopefully, you’ll be shut of him soon,” I said.

  Rudder gave me a knowing look. “Got the jitters about tomorrow morning do you?”

  It was stupid to deny it. Any idiot could see that now that any hope of surprise was lost. The raid would have to happen soon, so I wasn’t going to insult his intelligence by playing dumb.

  “I don’t think it’s going to go well,” I said.

  “I don’t either,” Rudder said. “Those dumb sonsabitches at the middle school might as well have sent flowers in ahead of time. You boys have a piece of work cut out for you, that’s for sure. Hell, if I was ten years younger, I might sign up and join you. I’d love to help clean those miscreants out of my county.”

  He started thumbing through the channels with his remote.

  “Hundred and thirty-two channels and not a fit thing for a man to watch. I’ve got The Searchers cued up in the DVD. You want to watch?”

  I stood.

  “I’d love to, but I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Enjoy it while you can. I don’t get more than three or four hours at a stretch anymore. It’s hell getting old.”

  I left him to the sweeping vistas of John Ford’s masterpiece. Alex was asleep or pretending to be, so I stared into the darkness until sleep finally came.

  Chapter 18

  “I’m getting too old for this shit,” Dale said as he took a drink from his canteen.

  Even though it was early, and we were under a camouflage net, it was already getting hot. Below us, Freedom Ranch was a beehive of activity. We’d systematically divided the area around the house into a grid, and counted fifty-three people around the various campsites. Most of them were carrying visible firearms, usually rifles, but thankfully all of them seemed to be adults. My biggest fear was that some of these nut cases were going to turn this into a family affair. Hopefully, the FBI would have had the good sense to change plans if that was the case.

  What worried me the most was the roadblock. Overnight two full-size pickup trucks had been parked nose to nose across the ranch gates. The beds were full of dirt and crushed concrete. I wasn’t sure how much they weighed, but I was sure it was several tons. We’d let the FBI command post know, and sent digital pictures, and received a curt acknowledgment.

  I wiped sweat out of my eyes and checked my watch. The FBI was two hours late. If they’d changed plans, they weren’t telling us. The last we’d heard, they’d blocked the highway on either side of the ranch entrance, and a huge convoy of vehicles was staged a couple of miles away.

  “There’s the drone again,” Robert said. About thirty seconds later, I heard the high pitched whine of the drone’s engines. We’d figured out that he could hear it long before Dale or I could. I wondered at what point I’d just have to go get hearing aids. I wasn’t that old, but the mixture of gunfire, flash-bang grenades, explosions, and too much loud electric guitar was taking its toll.

  It was devilishly difficult to see. I figured it was about six feet long or so, with a wingspan of maybe a little more. If it had been painted a shade that was a little less gray, and a little more blue, we would have never seen it against the cloudless sky. It settled into an orbit maybe a thousand feet above the ranch. That was new. It had done several flyovers this morning, usually doing a grid pattern of the ranch for a half hour or so, then leaving.

  For the first couple of hours after sunrise, we’d been busy. First, we’d tried to get a good count of all the people milling around. Then I’d worked a camera with a ridiculously long lens, trying to get facial shots of everyone down there, while Robert and Dale meticulously created a sketch of the compound, then
used our tripod-mounted laser range finder to create a range card. At this distance, if Dale had to put the big .50 caliber rifle to work, he’d have to make precise adjustments for range. If he miscalculated by even a few percent, the bullet could hit the ground well short of its target. He also would have to account for the wind. The problem was, the wind wasn’t blowing the same way across the whole mile plus trajectory the bullet would have to follow. In our immediate vicinity, the sun was warming the air in the valley below us, creating a gentle breeze that was blowing into our faces. Down below in the valley, gusts would kick up blowing generally from our left to right.

  I’d listen for a while as Dale and Robert discussed the wind values, then just tuned them out. I understood at a high level what they were talking about, but after awhile they left me in the weeds.

  I was using a high powered spotting scope to keep an eye on the hangar, and the little single-engine aircraft parked out front. As I watched a jeep drove up. A guy in his mid-30’s got out. He was dressed in khaki pants, a polo shirt and was wearing aviator shades. He started walking around the airplane.

  “See that?” I said.

  “Yup,” Dale said. “That sure looks like a pre-flight inspection to me.”

  I snapped a couple of pictures of the guy, then slid the camera’s memory card into a little gadget hooked up to my satellite phone. It transmitted the pictures back to our trailer. Beside me, Robert worked the joystick to center the video camera on the airplane. The guy in the shades moved the rudder of the plane back and forth, then stuck his head in the cockpit.

  “Hypothetically speaking, this here fifty cal would make pretty short work of that little airplane’s engine,” Dale said conversationally.

  A black SUV pulled up next to the jeep, and three men got out. I recognized two of them: Webb and Marshall. They walked into the hangar, carrying duffel bags, while the third stood by the doorway with a rifle slung across his chest.

  I took my eyes away from the scope for a second. It was fatiguing to look through it for too long, and I was constantly on the verge of a killer migraine. The crowd down below had been milling around aimlessly, but now they were gathered into a big circle, listening to somebody I didn’t recognize.