15
Friday, June 10th
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
A pair of armed guards—heavily armed
guards—stepped from a cedar planked and shingled kiosk and waved
the cars to a stop at a big wood-and-wire gate. The men were in
camouflage clothing, and one of them kept his assault rifle trained
on the ground right next to the car as the other man approached.
Aside from the rifles, they had sidearms, big sheath knives, and
some kind of grenades strapped on.
They must be burning up in that, Morrison
thought. It was in the high eighties out here, even in the
woods.
“Colonel Ventura,” the guard said. He saluted.
“Good to see you again, sir.”
Morrison’s roommate of last night, Missey, was at
the wheel. As they drove through the gate in a ten-foot-tall
chainlink fence topped with coils of razor wire, Morrison said,
“Colonel Ventura? What is this place?”
“The rank is honorary,” Ventura said. “I did some
work for the man who runs the place, once. And let’s call it a ...
patriot compound.”
There was a car in front of them with Ventura’s
operatives, and one behind them, special vehicles rented at a place
Morrison didn’t think was going to run Hertz out of business. The
guy who provided the cars had been covered in what looked like
Maori tattoos, including his face, and the deal had been done in
cash.
The drive from there had turned into a ride in the
country, about forty-five minutes’ worth to this place.
Morrison put two and two together: Idaho, men with
guns in paramilitary gear, razor wire. “Some kind of militia
group,” he said. “Neo Nazis or white supremacists?”
“Let’s just say if you were black, it would be a
lot harder to call in the favor.”
“Jesus.”
“These people speak very highly of him, yes, but I
doubt he spends much time here.”
Morrison shook his head.
“Then again, it is unlikely in the extreme that
anybody will sneak in here and kidnap you,” Ventura said.
“Certainly not anybody of the Oriental persuasion.”
“I thought you said the Chinese wouldn’t send
somebody who looked Chinese.”
They passed another trio of armed men in jungle
camo sitting on or standing next to a military vehicle, a Hummer or
Humvee or whatever. The three silently watched the cars go past,
and when Morrison looked back, he saw one of the men hold up a com
and speak into it.
“That’s only if they want to sneak up on you. The
Chinese don’t like to delegate certain functions—they don’t trust
each other, much less round-eyes. If you arrange a meeting with
them for something they want, they’ll send someone who looks and
acts the part. They won’t want you to doubt their sincerity.”
The narrow dirt road curved through another thick
patch of woods, then into a cleared space maybe three or four acres
big, with several prefab metal and wooden buildings centered in the
clearing, all painted a drab olive green. A big air-conditioner
rumbled in the background, spewing vapor into the hot
afternoon.
There were more military-style vehicles, more armed
men—as well as several armed women—and a pair of flags flying from
a tall wooden pole in front of the largest of the structures. There
was Old Glory, and under it, a shining white flag with what looked
like a pair of crossed yellow lightning bolts over a line drawing
of a hand.
“Sons of Pure Man,” Ventura said, watching Morrison
as he looked at the flags. “Empowered by God Almighty to smite the
wicked, scourge the impure, and kick the asses of anybody else who
would mongrelize the true race.”
“These people are friends of yours?”
Morrison said.
“These people will help me keep the wily
Chinese from grabbing you, draining you dry, and then smiling
politely as they hand your widow your head with an apple stuffed
into its mouth, on a platter. We aren’t family here, but allies are
where you find them—sometimes you have to overlook a few little
cultural or philosophical differences.”
Morrison sighed, but didn’t say anything else.
Ventura had a point. He was about to go into negotiations with
people who had been wise in the ways of political and court
intrigue for five thousand years. Being ruthless was not a problem
for a culture with as much practice at it as they had. And he had
hired Ventura for his expertise. As long as he did the job,
Morrison didn’t care how.
“So now you put in a call to your friend the used
car buyer and invite him to drop round for a little chat. He won’t
like it, but he’ll come, especially if he’s figured out who you
are, and that you might indeed have something worth selling.”
“And after that?”
“Well, once they know you are where they can’t get
to you, then we can leave. Further communication can be relayed
through here—the general has quite an up-to-date collection of
electronics—and with any luck, we can keep them believing you are
still here until the deal is done.”
“And after the deal is done—if it is?”
“One step at a time, Dr. Morrison. We’ll burn that
bridge when we have to burn it. Oh, and by the way, after we step
out of the car? Assume that everything we say is being
monitored—because it probably is. They can’t hear us in here
because we’re protected by certain devices, but outside, you can
book it that somebody will have a shotgun mike or even a laser
reader on us at all times.”
“ ‘Allies,’ you said?”
“Trust no one and no one can betray you. Just good
tactics is all. Ah. There’s the general, come to welcome us.”
Jackson “Bull” Smith was no more a general than
Ventura was a colonel, save to the bunch of mouthbreathers who
hut-hut-hutted around his compound in the Idaho woods. Thirty years
ago, Smith had been an Army infantryman, done some fighting in the
Middle East, and more ground-pounding in one of the never-ending
eastern European wars, but he’d never gotten past master sergeant,
and that only when he got tapped to serve in the unit
quartermasters, where he spent his last two tours. Still, he knew
the Army way as well as any decent NCO, had seen legitimate
action—he had a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star—and he was very
canny. It was true you couldn’t run an army without sergeants, and
Smith knew the ropes well enough to organize a bunch of half-assed
warrior-wannabes into a fair imitation of soldierly discipline. At
the very least, they were good robbers, because that was chiefly
how they raised their operating funds. So far, they had knocked
over supermarkets, banks, a theater multiplex, an armored car, and
a small Indian casino, all without being caught or losing a man,
and without killing too many bystanders. Ventura knew their M.O.,
and he’d sort of halfway kept track. Smith’s boys had stolen
somewhere in the range of six to seven million dollars in the last
year alone, Ventura guessed.
You could buy a lot of Idaho backwoods and MREs for
seven million dollars.
As Smith stepped forward to shake his hand, Ventura
nodded crisply at the man, a choppy, military bow. “General.”
“Please, Luther, it’s ‘Bull.’ ”
Ventura suppressed a smile. Yeah, he thought it was
bull, too. “I don’t want to break discipline in front of the
men.”
“Understood,” Smith said.
Ventura didn’t know how much of the pure race crap
Smith really believed, if any. The money and power were probably a
lot more attractive, since Smith’s history, military and otherwise,
didn’t show any particular contention with or hatred of any of the
“mongrel” races until lately, but—you never knew. Pushing sixty,
ole Bull here had been at this militia game for about ten years. He
was living high on the hog, considering the location. Good food,
good booze, women, toys, and the admiration and obedience of a
couple hundred men, give or take. There were a lot worse ways to
spend your time if you were an old ex-sergeant with no other
skills.
Five years ago, when Ventura had still been in the
assassination business, Smith had contacted him the usual
roundabout way, and they had struck a deal. A certain influential
politician in the Idaho statehouse—if that wasn’t an oxymoron—had
been standing in the way of Smith’s acquisition of this very
compound, something to do with land use, or butting up against
state forestry property or some such. The politician, a state
senator, knew what Bull and the boys were up to, and there was too
much of that going on in Idaho already, the state was getting a
real bad reputation. Tourists didn’t want to come and see the boys
playing war games—at least, not the kind of tourists the state
wanted. It was bad for business if little junior went out picking
berries and got mowed down by a bunch of gun-happy paramilitary
goons who mistook him for an enemy, or Bambi, as had happened at
least once.
If he couldn’t stop it legally, there were some
shadier ways to get things done, and the senator knew how to do
them. This, of course, played right into Bull’s conspiracy
fantasies.
So. The politician died in what the coroner said
was an accident, and Smith got the property he wanted. And Bull was
not a man to forget somebody who’d done him a service.
“General, I’d like to introduce Professor Morrison.
The doctor here is doing some secret work for the Navy and Air
Force, and naturally we don’t trust them to keep him safe for our
mission.”
“Understood,” Smith said. He offered his hand to
Morrison, who took it. “There are traitors everywhere.”
“Sad, but true,” Ventura said.
“I’ll have my adjutant show your people where to
bivouac, and you and the professor can join me for dinner.”
“Excellent idea, General,” Ventura said.
When Smith was a few yards ahead of them, Morrison
said, “How are you going to explain a Chinese agent coming here to
see me?”
“What, a turncoat chink double-agent? We’re feeding
false information to our gook enemies, Doctor, you know that. The
general understands how espionage works. He keeps his ears open.”
Ventura tapped his own ear, and hoped that the man would remember
what he’d said about being watched and listened to.
Morrison remembered. “Ah. Yes, I see you’re right.
A man in the general’s position would know these things.”
“Of course. Hell of a soldier, Bull Smith, and a
credit to the Race.” He turned slightly so that Morrison’s head
would block any camera that might see his face, and gave the man a
quick wink.
He also reached around and adjusted the paddle
holster in his waistband. The general’s people were probably fairly
loyal, not counting the undercover federal ops that must have
infiltrated by now; still, Condition Orange applied here, just as
it did everywhere else. If need be, he could pull the Coonan from
concealment and get off two shots in about a second. Not a patch on
John Wesley Hardin out of a hip-slung rig, maybe, but still pretty
damned fast from under a vest. And until they got inside with
Smith, his people would have his back covered.
So far, so good. Pretty soon, though, it was going
to get a lot more interesting.