Jaeger and Shanks returned to the office and took their seats at the beat up conference table again.
Malvone said, “Okay, let’s get back to business. Bob, what do you have lined up for tonight?”
“We’re still working down the rod and gun club list; we’ve got surveillance on these two, Bancroft and Kincaid. We’re going to take a little breather tonight, do the surveillance in shifts and let the troops get some rest. ”
“No, I’m sorry Bob; we can’t let them rest up, not yet. I’ve got a new mission that’s got to go down tonight; they can sleep after it’s over tomorrow. Here’s tonight’s target.” Malvone passed a thin file folder from his briefcase to each STU leader. They contained printed images of a thin-faced nearly bald man in his late fifties or early sixties, biographical data sheets, copies of magazine editorials, and printed excerpts from what looked like internet chat sites.
“This guy is Leo Swarovski; anybody heard of him?” asked Malvone.
“Oh sure,” said Shanks, “he writes for gun magazines. I’ve seen that name for years.”
“Exactly. He’s what you call a ‘prolific writer.’ Swarovski writes under his own name and a couple of pseudonyms for a half dozen gun magazines, plus he’s written a dozen books on guns and military history. He’s not a member of the Black Water Rod and Gun Club, but he’s a friend of Burgess Edmonds, and that’s close enough for government work. It’ll fly out in TV-land.
“And he’s been a real thorn in our side for years. Every time the ATF has stepped on its dick in the last 20 years, Swarovski’s been all over our case. He calls us ‘F-troop’ and ‘jackbooted thugs’ and the ‘gun Gestapo’, all that crap, and right in print, right in his articles! He’s one of the worst Constitution fanatics you ever saw, he’s a real Second Amendment nut case, and he’s extremely anti-government.”
Michael Shanks said, “The man really knows his guns though, I’ll give him that. And he used to be a pretty well known competition shooter. I think he won some national combat pistol shooting championships in the 1980s.”
“That’s all true,” replied Malvone. “And he’s still pretty sharp. He shoots almost every day; he reloads his own ammo, the whole nine yards. So he’s not going to be a pushover. His wife’s a serious shooter too; she used to be regular Annie Oakley, and for a while she was nationally ranked in trap and skeet. So I’m expecting these two to be dead-enders all the way. They’ll shoot back if we give them half a chance, so we’re not going to. This is going to be a straight-up no-knock raid: door charges, flash-bangs, the works.”
“This is in Richmond?” asked Silvari.
“The Richmond suburbs,” replied Malvone. “Closer to Petersburg.”
“Then this isn’t going to be like Edmonds, this isn’t going to be an accidental fire, this is going to be an overt law enforcement raid? Are we going overt now, are we going to intentionally blow our cover?” asked Bob Bullard.
“It’s just going to be reported that the raid was conducted by a federal law enforcement tactical unit. The details beyond that will all be protected under the Patriot Act: there’s no Freedom of Information Act for terrorism-related cases. It’s all clamped shut, there’s a total blackout, so the STU Team itself will still be covert.”
The other leaders around the table nodded in agreement.
“I gave the Richmond Field Office SAIC a heads-up call. When you’re finished with Swarovski, the Richmond ATF is going to assert federal control and take charge of evidence collection. It’s already set up. When you’re done, you just get in your vehicles and come back.”
Bullard asked, “What kind of ‘evidence’? Does he have any contraband?”
Malvone answered, “He’s got, or a least he had, at least a dozen assault-type rifles that we know of. And he’s owned at least three fifty caliber sniper rifles, including one semi-auto Barrett. Plus you can bet he’s got rifle scopes out the ass. Maybe he got rid of them all, maybe he didn’t; you’ll find out soon enough tonight. But even if he did get rid of everything illegal, it doesn’t matter, because you’ll be bringing some of your own as insurance.”
Hammet interjected, “We can bring some of Edmonds’s scoped hunting rifles, that’ll tie them together.”
“Sniper rifles George, sniper rifles. But that’s the idea. And we’ll bring some of our confiscated militia weapons too. That’s all we actually need, any contraband weapons of his own will just be icing on the cake.”
Bullard added, “Don’t forget he’s an ammunition reloader. And that means he’s got gun powder, so we can stick bomb making on him too. That always looks good on a domestic terrorism case.”
“Right you are Bob, right you are. But the only ‘case’ we need to make is in the court of public opinion, because Swarovski’s going to be carried out of his house feet first.”
Malvone continued, “Now you might be thinking that doing this asshole Swarovski will be a good night’s work, and it will be, but it’s not all, it’s just one step leading up to the main event. Tomorrow the STU is going to break out from the rest of federal law enforcement; we’re going right to the top of the pack. Oh, we’ll still be an anonymous ‘ATF tactical unit’ out in TV-land, but we’re going to be very, very popular where it matters. I’m telling you, Randolph and Sanderson getting sniped, that hit too close to home!
“Want to know why I don’t want Fallon or Sorrento marked up? Have you wondered about that? Have you wondered why we haven’t turned Fallon over for a public arrest? I mean, here’s the state AG’s assassin, that’s quite a feather in our cap to bring him in, right? We could have done the big media perp walk and taken the credit, but we didn’t, and here’s why: Fallon and Sorrento haven’t finished their crime spree yet. They’re driving up to Washington tomorrow to assassinate the Homeland Security Director, but they’re not going to make it all the way.”
The men passed sly looks and winks to each other around the table. Jaeger said, “And let me guess who’s going to discover the plot and save the day, just in the nick of time.” He turned and gave Michael Shanks a high-five.
Shanks added, “And naturally, these two desperados will be taking along a couple of Burgess Edmonds’s finest long-range sniper rifles for the assassination attempt.”
“Well I’m done here now, you guys don’t need me any more, I can go back to DC,” Malvone joked. “Really, I can see you guys have grasped the concept. So tonight we’re going to leave some of Edmonds’s rifles at Swarovski’s place. Tomorrow, Fallon will be found with another of Edmonds’s rifles, and if Swarovski’s still got them, one of his fifty calibers. That’ll tie them all together in one nice tight bundle. Fallon and Sorrento as the trigger men; Edmonds and Swarovski as the money man and the organizer. Cut and Print. In fact, it’s the information I’ve got in my briefcase now that’s going to lead you to Fallon and Sorrento tomorrow, the information you’re going to ‘find’ in Swarovski’s house. So this time, don’t burn his damn house down!”
They all laughed at that one, and exchanged knowing nods.
Jaeger said, “Boss, at the risk of sounding like an ass-kisser, I have to say you are one scary freaking genius.”
“Well Tim, I don’t know if I’m a genius or not, but I’ll admit I did have kind of a ‘eureka moment’ a few years ago, a real shot of pure 100-proof insight. You know about ‘plausible deniability’, and how we use it all the time to avoid taking any blame for screw-ups. By ‘we’, you know, I mean the government. If there’s any possible alternative explanation for a screw-up, no matter how far-fetched, you just deny, deny, deny; and if there’s no rock-solid direct proof, eventually the problem goes away.”
Silvari said “Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter accusations.”
“Exactly.” Malvone continued. “Clinton was the real master; he raised it to an art form. But I’ve been studying more recent history, and especially the way the media reports things, and then it just hit me. All of a sudden I saw the flip side of ‘plausible deniability.’ I call it ‘probable culpability.’ Smear somebody, plant some evidence, and then cap ‘em. As long as the target is somebody the media didn’t like to begin with, they report it just exactly the way you want them to, right down the line.”
“Like Waco,” said Bob Bullard, who had been there.
“Just like Waco. If we’re dealing with ‘religious cults’ like in Waco, or gun nuts like Edmonds and Swarovski, it’s a piece of cake, because the media already hates them. Show them some automatic weapons that were found in the ashes, who can say otherwise? We’re from the ATF, so we’re the experts, right? The TV networks are all on our side in this, just look at how well it worked on Timeline!”
“Oh yeah, ‘Terror in Tidewater’, that was beautiful!” said Tim Jaeger. “You can always count on CBA to do a gun story the right way.”
“As long as we paint it in broad strokes, it’ll work every time, at least with the major networks,” said Malvone. “If anybody finds a few details that don’t fit, some actual evidence that contradicts our version, it doesn’t even matter, because then they’re just dismissed as paranoid ‘black helicopter’ kooks, and after that they can never get any traction in the ‘respectable’ media. Waco, Vince Foster, Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge, you name it: anybody who bucks the official story is called a lunatic and a conspiracy theorist. Nobody wants to be lumped in with the black helicopter loony tunes, so no credible reporter ever looks into these cases very hard. Other than a few whack jobs on internet sites, nobody that matters ever really challenges the official stories. Just look at Waco, for God’s sake! Or Vince Foster, or any of them.”
Silvari said, “Reporters are so afraid of being called a conspiracy theory nut, that it actually makes minor conspiracies easy to pull off.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” said Malvone. “That’s the beauty of ‘probable culpability’.”
Shanks snorted and said, “Yeah, just ask Burgess Edmonds, the militia kingpin!”
Jaeger high-fived him again and added, “Or Sorrento or Fallon!”
“Don’t forget Swarovski, he’s next!” added Shanks.
Malvone said, “Once I came up with a method for applying ‘probable culpability’ in an organized way, the rest was easy. The FBI is so hamstrung by political correctness that it’s afraid of its own shadow, and it’s almost as bad at the CIA. They just play it safe, they won’t get down in the dirt, they won’t recruit real informants, they won’t take chances. And that’s where our little STU Team comes in: we’re not risk-averse.”
“To say the least!” said Jaeger.
“And we’re fast,” continued Malvone. “The White House is desperate now, they finally realized that the FBI is just about useless, and they need a unit that can ‘get results’ right away. That’s us: we get results. And up in DC, they don’t want to know how.
“Somehow the FBI became a big timid giant who can’t lean over far enough to tie his shoes. I mean, just how ‘special’ can 15,000 Special Agents be? They’re just an army of PC bureaucrats. Well, that’s just not cutting it any more! So when something comes along like the Stadium Massacre, and Senators are getting sniped and bridges are getting blown up, who’s around that can handle it? We are! We’re small, we’re agile, and we’re fast.
“Now, to get the fast results we need, we might have to ‘help’ our cases with a little extra evidence, but anyway that’s just for the media, not for court. Our cases don’t go to court.”
“Let’s talk about Swarovski,” said Bob Bullard, getting them back onto the task at hand, wearing reading glasses while paging through his target folder. “He lives this side of Richmond, 85 miles from here.”
Silvari asked, “Wally, did you bring any overheads?”
“No, not this time.”
“Well then, let’s get the Piper up there to shoot some pictures,” said Silvari. “We might get weathered-in if we wait around too long.”
“Do it,” said Bullard.
“And let’s send the Virginia Power van up there to start ground surveillance,” Silvari added.
“Are we going to use both teams tonight?” Shanks asked Bullard.
“Yes, but this time Gold will be the assault team, and Blue will be in support.”
“Bob, are we going to get a chance to sleep some time this week? The men are all bitching about the operational tempo,” said Shanks.
Malvone replied, “I know your guys are beat, I know they’ve been operating non-stop since we moved to Tidewater. After tomorrow, we’re going to wind it up down here in STUville, and take a few days of R&R. I’m just asking the guys for one more big push, and then they’ll get their rest.”
Bob Bullard continued planning out loud. “Okay, we’ll use both teams; all four Suburbans and the two vans. Hit him at 0300, be back before dawn.”
“Negative Bob,” said Malvone. “We need to move it up as early as possible, hit ASAP after their lights go out. The way it’s going to work, the evidence you’re going to ‘find’ at Swarovski’s tonight is going to lead right to a fast follow-up mission tomorrow, when you overtake Fallon and Sorrento in the red pickup truck. We’ll need time after the Swarovski raid to set up tomorrow’s shootout.” He looked at each, to make sure they were tracking. They were.
“Work out the details on tonight’s raid; just make it as early as you can. Okay? I’m going over to the hangars to check on the troops and see how they’re doing. I’ll tell them we just need another twenty-four hours of hard charging and they’ll all get a few days off, that should motivate them. Finish up the mission planning, and I’ll be back for the briefing. George, come on out and take a walk with me.”
They stepped outside into the sunshine; it was clouding up in the west.
****
“Let’s go over by the chopper and talk,” said Malvone. “Joe was right; it looks like it might rain later on. If it gets too crappy I’m going to have to take off sooner than I thought.”
“Around here, they say if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few hours and it’ll change.”
“I believe it. Listen George, I want you to sit out tonight’s raid. I’ve got another mission for you, Bob already knows about it. He’ll tell Tim and Michael that I want you interrogating Fallon tonight because you know him the best, and I want you to get the last crack at him. But after the teams take off for Petersburg, I want you to get rid of Edmonds. He’s baggage; he’s got nothing to offer us. He’s just a liability.”
“You want me to deep-six him in his Mercedes?”
“Right. Buckle him in his driver’s seat, use his pistol for one shot to the temple like a suicide, and then roll his car in the water. Bob will get one of the techs to follow you out and bring you back. After that, go on home and put in a full day at the Field Office and the Joint Task Force tomorrow, you still need to get your face time there. Once we pack out of here and get our permanent facility set up in Maryland, I’ll run the paperwork for your transfer to the STU, and then we’ll start building the Red Team, all right?”
“That sounds great Wally. You can count on me: Edmonds is going to disappear without a trace. And I’ll play it real low key around here.”
“That’s what we need George, no fuss, no big production… just get rid of him quietly while the teams are going after Swarovski.”
****
Ranya put considerations of stealth and concealment almost entirely aside and backtracked to her Enduro in less than half of the time it had taken her to infiltrate the base. Once in the cornfield by her bike she located her jacket-wrapped helmet and pulled out her mini purse and her wallet, then frantically dug through it until she found the tattered business card with Phil Carson’s phone numbers penciled on the back.
From an outside pouch of her daypack she pulled out a sodden cardboard box the size of a paperback book, it was one of the two prepaid cell phones she had purchased at a drug store only an hour before she was supposed to meet Brad. The box fell apart as she opened it, but inside, the gray plastic tub still had its silver foil sealed across the top. She peeled off the foil; the phone inside was dry and, she hoped, functional. It was one of the new throwaways the size of a pack of cards, all black with just a twelve-button keypad and an earplug speaker on a wire. She had never used this type, she put the plug in her ear and pushed the power button, and the tiny LCD display showed that she had sixty minutes of air time available. Thirty dollars for sixty minutes, and it was a bargain at that price, she now thought. She punched in the first phone number on Carson’s business card.
Come on, come on, be home! Pick up! The afternoon light filtered though the corn rows in vertical slices. Soaring cumulus clouds were rolling in from the west; they were radiant silver at their edges where the sun was striking them. After six rings, a woman’s synthesized voice answered: Carson’s voicemail.
“Hey Uncle, it’s your niece, I’m calling at 4:30. Call me right now; it’s a matter of life and death.” She read the number off of the back of the disposable phone. Then she called the other number on the card, but another robot voice announced that the subscriber was out of the service area. Well there, I’ve done it, she thought. If Phil Carson is already under electronic surveillance, I’ve just compromised both of us, and given up my cell number and location. But it can’t be helped. It’s a chance I’ve got to take, there’s no time left for playing it safe. If Phil can help me, great. If not, I’ll go back to the cache and get the short AR-15 carbine, and all the ammo and magazines I can find, and go in by myself. I’ll wait until dark, and if Phil doesn’t call, I’ll go back in alone, hopefully after most of the killers have gone out for the night on another raid.
Ranya paced back and forth between the dusty rows of corn. She was itching under the bottom of her bra so badly that she took it off from under her damp black t-shirt, pulling it out over one arm at a time. She had never felt so grimy and disgusting or itched so badly in her life; she had cuts and scratches all over her arms, neck and face. She found her folding brush and forced it through her hair, then pulled it into a new ponytail, but the rubber band broke so she had to leave it down.
****
Ten minutes later her ear plug buzzed and she stabbed at the button. “Hello?” she said.
“It’s you, girl?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Can you talk?”
“I’m at a pay phone, go ahead.”
“I never used this phone before; it’s a prepaid throwaway cell phone.”
“Okay, that’s good. So what’s life and death?”
“Well, me, I am, if you can’t help. And somebody else. You remember that guy at my old house, the guy who buried my dog?”
“I remember him.”
“Well I’ve, I mean…we’ve got a relationship… He’s been kidnapped. He was picked up, arrested, ‘snatched’ I guess, but not by cops. By the people who killed my father, the same people who probably burned the Edmonds family and God knows what else.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because I’ve seen their damn base! I’m right outside of it now. I just spent all afternoon crawling through shit doing a recon on the place. I saw my friend getting dragged around the place in handcuffs, and some of the people in there are carrying MP-5s—MP-5s like the one they shot my father with. They’ve got Suburbans and vans hidden in a big aircraft hangar, they’ve got a Winnebago with more antennas on top than NASA. They’ve even got a helicopter, and a single engine airplane just took off from there. They’re wearing regular street clothes and they’ve got long hair, and they sure don’t look like the military or regular cops, what else can I tell you?” Ranya was trying but failing to keep her composure while making her case, standing in a corn field next to her old Enduro, pleading on a tinny throwaway cell phone with a nearly sixty year old ex-soldier.
“Okay, I believe you; that sounds seriously bad. Where is this place?”
“It’s in Chesapeake near the Carolina border, at the bottom of the old Naval Auxiliary Landing Field. They’re in two big hangars and two smaller buildings. If they’re taking people to an abandoned base, you know what that means; it’s totally outside the law, and they’re probably…torturing them. Why else would they be taking them to a place like that? So it’s just a question of time until they’re going to get around to us anyway, I mean nobody can hold out forever…I mean…if he’s being tortured…” She finally lost control, and the tears came.
“Easy girl, easy… What you’re saying is probably all true. What do you want me to do? I don’t guess you plan to run, or you wouldn’t still be there.”
She paused, and replied weakly, “No, I’m not going to run. I’m going in after him, one way or the other. I just want you to help me.”
“How many of them are there?”
“At least fifteen or twenty that I saw.”
“With MP-5s?”
“Some of them. And all of them were carrying pistols. But I’m hoping that some of them will be out tonight doing what they do: burning down houses and shooting people. Oh God, that sounds terrible, to wish for that! But if some of them are gone, that’ll help… Anyway, listen, I know we can get in and out, I’ve got the layout, and they’ve got shit for security. It can be done, but I need your help. Phil, I remember once you said a war was coming…well it’s already here for me. I’m already in the middle of it. Will you help me?”
There was a pause, and then an audible sigh. “You know the answer to that. I’m too old and busted up to run very fast or very far, but I reckon I’ve got one more good fight in me. Yeah I’ll help you. Why the hell not? What am I saving myself for? And after what they did to your father and the Edmondses, well, they’ve got it coming. So sign me up; I’m on your team.”
“Thanks Phil…thanks.”
“I take it you’ve got your rice rocket down there?”
“Not the one you’re thinking of, I’m on my old dirt bike. I followed them down here on it.”
“Okay now, let me think. Let me think. Okay. Do you know where the Wagon Wheel is? You probably passed it on your way down. It’s closed; it used to be a country music place. I might be able to round up somebody else to help us out; we’ll rendezvous there, behind the restaurant end of the place.”
“I saw it on the way down here, it’s a couple miles back up South River Road,” said Ranya.
“That’s right. Can you watch the base from where you are?”
“No, it takes too long of a time to get inside; it’s almost an hour from here on foot.”
“Is there anywhere you can watch them from outside that’s easy to get to, but near your bike?”
“The gate. I know where they drive into the base. I can watch the gate.”
“That’s perfect. That’s where you should go; you can see them if they leave tonight. Then we’ll have a better guess about how many are left on the base, and we’ll know what we’re up against.”
“All right.”
“Call me when you see them leave, just count the vehicles. If nobody leaves by midnight, we’ll go in later when they’re sleeping.”
“Okay. Do you really think you’ll be able to get anybody else to help us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Hey, I guess I’ll know who my real friends are after tonight, huh?”
Ranya managed a laugh. “Yeah, I’d say this is the true test of friendship.”
“Yep, I’d say it is too. Listen, do you have any paper on you? While you’re watching the gate, start drawing me maps, lots of maps, put down everything you can think of. Just remember ‘SALUTE’: size, activity, location, unit, time, equipment. Damn! Where’d that come from? I haven’t even thought of that in thirty-forty years! It must be like riding a bike; maybe you never really forget.”
****
Wally Malvone had constructed the Special Training Unit’s internal security on the principle of mutual overlapping guilty knowledge. Everybody on the team was in some way or another a bad apple, a misfit, or a rogue. They all had dark histories, with personnel records full of reprimands and censures. Most of them had once been extremely gung-ho, and in their zeal to bust criminals, they’d often trampled over the line of the law and eventually been brought to task, removed from their units and put on limited duty while languishing in legal hold. Over several years Malvone had culled their names from ATF disciplinary files. He’d personally saved many of them from dismissal or worse, and in the process he had earned their unquestioning loyalty and gratitude.
When he offered to give them another chance, their supervisors were usually quite pleased to turf out their problem children to the obscure experimental training unit. In this way he had quietly forged his own personally-beholden mailed fist, iron link by iron link. In those early days the STU, his STU, had quietly occupied an unnoticed niche within the ATF, until after the Stadium Massacre.
Malvone knew about most of the skeletons in his troops’ closets, and they in turn knew about many of each others’. Frequently there were cases which could still be opened, witnesses which were still at large, and victims who could still bring charges, if they were provided with the right information and incentives.
Because of this, the STU Team, from top to bottom, became an organization based on the unspoken but mutually agreed upon principle of “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.” No one was clean, and no one would turn rat because the rat could wind up charged with some of his own past crimes, and the charges would be pursued and made to stick. Even more importantly, they all knew that if anyone turned rat, he’d be found and killed, painfully. There was no federal witness relocation program which could protect a turncoat agent from other federal agents, and they all knew this for a fact.
Malvone had carefully compartmentalized knowledge of the STU Team’s extra-legal “proactive” measures. Bullard knew, of course, about the bomb he had placed under Mark Denton’s jeep, but not the truth behind the gun store arsons, or the mosque attack. Hammet knew about them, of course, but not the Denton car bomb. They all believed that Burgess Edmonds really was a dangerous militia paymaster, and that they had merely helped to clinch the case (in the media) by salting his house with some illegal weapons seized from actual militia kooks. Only Hammet knew the benign truth about the rod and gun club, but he wasn’t an actual member of the STU.
So, the most damaging facts were mostly contained and insulated. But to Wally Malvone, there was still one gaping internal security threat, one open window to board up and nail shut permanently. After doing a walk-through of the hangars and speaking informally to the troops, and attending the initial Swarovski mission briefing in the classroom trailer, Malvone took Bob Bullard aside in a corner of the trailer hangar. He spoke quietly, regretfully.
“Listen, Bob, we’ve got a serious problem.”
“Huh? What problem Wally?”
“We’ve got a rat, an informant.”
“What? Bullshit! You’re bullshitting, right? Is this a test? Are you serious?”
“I’m dead serious.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s…it’s George Hammet. He’s been contacting the Justice Department behind our backs, talking to the Solicitor General’s office…I suppose he thinks he’s buying himself some immunity, he’s been telling them about some of our…tactics. I guess he thinks if this blows up in our faces, he’ll be the first in line to get a deal. Lucky for us, the U.S. Attorney he approached is somebody I personally know, and he got right back to me to warn me about what Hammet’s doing. But that kind of luck can’t last; my friend stalled him for now, but sooner or later Hammet’s going to go somewhere else with his story and burn us.”
“Shit! I can’t believe it! That Goddamned bastard—I’ll kill him myself!”
“Yeah Bob, I know how you feel, I feel the same way, but here’s my idea. I gave him a special mission tonight; he’s going to ‘Vince Foster’ Edmonds in his Mercedes and roll it into a lake. Hammet’s already got the place scoped out; it’s in the Great Dismal Swamp. He just needs somebody to drive him back here afterwards, so pick one of the support techs who are staying back here tonight while the teams drive to Richmond. Pick one of the techs who can handle wet work, explain it like I explained it to you: Hammet’s a rat; he’s going to a U.S. Attorney behind our backs. Choose somebody who’s got the stones to take care of an informant.”
“Wally, I already know who. Garfield.”
“Perfect.”
Clay Garfield was a good old boy from the hills of eastern Tennessee who’d been an operator with the ATF’s Special Response Team, until one of his teammates accidentally put a 9mm bullet practically through his left knee during close-quarters-battle training. After many surgeries and a pile of stainless steel and plastic later, Garfield was still unable to return to unrestricted duty. He could have gone before a medical board and retired early with a partial disability, but Garfield wanted to remain an operator and finish his twenty years with ATF. Malvone had found the burly no-neck hillbilly gimping around the new ATF Headquarters in Washington shuffling paperwork on limited duty. He’d seen the fire in his eyes and offered him a chance to get back into the field on operations, even in a limited capacity, with the most hardcore bunch of operators the ATF had ever assembled in one place. Garfield had eagerly accepted the offer.
Knee brace or no knee brace, Garfield was still a tough and ruthless bastard who could bench almost 400 pounds, and while he was smart enough, he wasn’t too smart. Malvone had taken him into the STU officially as assistant unit armorer, in charge of their weapons, but he was versatile enough to help the commo techs and computer geeks in the Winnebago, while the tactical teams were out on operations.
But the real reason that Malvone and Bullard liked having Garfield on the team was that he was an utterly loyal hard ass whose mere presence with the sometimes flaky support pukes kept them focused and assured their reliability. The support guys all liked him well enough, but they were also afraid of the hard-drinking and profane Clay Garfield. When he jokingly threatened to rip their arms off and beat them to death with them, the techs did not completely dismiss the possibility out of hand. Clay Garfield was capable of doing it, or so they believed.
Bullard said, “I’ll tell Clay to come over and help Hammet with the Fallon interrogation after Blue and Gold leave for Richmond, and I’ll tell Hammet that Clay’s going to bring him back after he dumps Edmonds in the lake. But I’ll tell Clay to put them both in the lake. He can make it look like Edmonds and Hammet had a struggle for the gun, something like that.”
“That’s perfect, that’s it exactly. Do it like that. Then Garfield just drives back here alone and keeps his mouth shut, and Hammet goes missing but nobody notices for a few days. The Field Office thinks he’s here, we think he’s at the Field Office, and his wife’s used to him being out of touch in the field. That’ll hold up for a few days, and by then he’s gone from the face of the earth, and we don’t have any clue where he is. He’s not actually in the STU you know, there’s no paper connecting him to us…
“Oh, and one more thing: tell Garfield to leave the car windows open a little.” Malvone held his thumb and index finger a few inches apart.
“To let the air out?”
“No, to let the crabs in. In a few days there’ll be nothing left but bones in the car.”
****
Wally Malvone left for Washington a greatly relieved man. The one wild card left in his deck, the one gaping security threat, was going to be permanently eliminated. While most of the members of the STU Team had certain pieces of guilty knowledge concerning illegal unit activities, they all believed that they were fighting for the worthy cause of crushing right wing terrorism. They all saw themselves as soldiers in the war against domestic terrorism, and they were all firm believers that there were no rules in war except to win, and that included using unconventional and extra-legal methods. They all believed that this latest front in the war against terrorism had been opened up by militia crazies at the stadium with the massacre of 1,200 innocent football fans, and that the militias deserved no respect, legal considerations, or mercy.
But only George Hammet had been with Malvone and Shifflett up in Landover Maryland two long weeks before. Only Malvone and Hammet knew for a fact that the Stadium Massacre was a contrived operation, and only Malvone and Hammet knew who had pulled the trigger of that infamous SKS rifle ninety times...
Wally Malvone was a firm believer in the adage that two people could keep a secret, but only if one of them was dead. Before the sun rose again, the primary source of his anxiety would be gone forever, keeping the secret at the bottom of a black water lake.