Heat (3 page)

B
arker took a seat at the opposite end of the table. “How would you like to get out of prison?” he asked.

“I'm already out of prison,” Jesse said. “Now why don't you just cut to the chase and tell me what I have to do to stay out?”

Barker nodded at Fuller and the younger man placed a briefcase on the table, opened it, took out an eight-by-ten photograph and put it in front of Jesse.

Jesse saw a head and chest shot of a young man in the uniform and green beret of the Army Special Forces. He was rail thin, handsome, deeply tanned, square-jawed and his chest displayed many ribbons. Master sergeant's stripes adorned his sleeves.

Barker opened his own briefcase and took out some papers, glancing at them as he spoke. “This man's name is Jack Gene Coldwater; that photograph was taken in 1972, and, as far as we know, it was the last picture ever taken of him. Christ only knows what he looks like now. He was born in Ship Rock, New Mexico, in 1949, to a Navaho father and a white mother;
he attended the local public schools, played football and was good at it. He turned down a football scholarship when he graduated from high school; instead, he joined the army; he was good at that, too. He was big, smart and tough as nails, and Special Forces got hold of him right out of boot camp. His service record says he was a natural. He pulled
four tours
in Vietnam and led missions all over the country, north and south, in Cambodia and Laos, mostly infiltration with only a few men; he rose to the rank of master sergeant faster than it should have been possible, and by the time the war ended he was the practical equivalent of a company commander. There were bird colonels who were scared shitless of him, and his commanding officers, his platoon leaders and company commanders,
always
did what he told them to. He won just about every decoration the army had to offer, except a Medal of Honor, and he was recommended for that. Word is, his regimental commander—one of those colonels who was scared shitless of him—blocked it; I wasn't able to find out why.

“Coldwater didn't want the Vietnam war to end, and when Saigon fell, he passed up a seat on the last chopper out, then fought a rear guard action for another week. He finished up at Vung Tau, southeast of Saigon, with his back to the sea and two men left. Then he stole a boat and sailed it down the South China Sea, past the mouth of the Mekong River, fighting a running battle with Vietnamese craft, around the cape called Mui Ca Mau, then northeast along the Cambodian coast to Trat, in Thailand, right on the Cambodian border.

“From there he and his merry band took a bus to Bangkok and reported to the military attaché at the American Embassy, who got them onto a plane back to the States before anybody knew they were there. Once home, he took discharge, and that was the last we heard of him until a couple of years ago.”

“So what's he doing now?” Jesse asked. “Dealing drugs?”

“The DEA can be happy he's not,” Barker said. “The truth is, we're not exactly sure
what
the hell he's doing, but we think it involves a lot of weapons. He's living in the Idaho panhandle, on a mountain just south of the Coeur d'Alene Indian reservation, next to a little town called St. Clair; he has at least four wives, numerous children and no visible means of support. He's the titular head of something registered as an official religion in the state, called the Church of the Aryan Universe.”

“Funny,” Jesse said, “I had a meeting with a fellow from Aryan Nation just this morning.”

“This isn't Aryan Nation; it's an entirely separate organization. Aryan Nation is mostly made up of convicts and ex-convicts. The people around Coldwater are apparently model citizens. They do seem to share a view of the world with Aryan Nation, though—the idea that the white man is God's supreme creation and that everybody else is inferior.”

“Sound like a delightful bunch of people,” Jesse said.

“Yeah. A couple of years ago the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms began to get reports of somebody buying large amounts of small arms on the West Coast; then the reports got to be of bigger stuff—anti-tank weapons, recoilless rifles, that sort of thing. They put a couple of men on it; one of them got close and got a bullet in the brain for his trouble, then the trail went cold.

“About fourteen months ago—just about the time you went away—we got a snitch who said that Coldwater was the guy buying the weapons. ATF sent two men up there, undercover. One went in as a life insurance salesman—they actually trained him to sell insurance. The other got a job as a shoe salesman. Both of them simply vanished.”

“Did they report anything before they went up in smoke?” Jesse asked.

“Only what I've told you; that's everything we know up to now. When the new administration came into office, some people at Justice began to take an interest in cults and white supremacist groups, and somebody at ATF, which was backing away from this real fast, passed on the Coldwater file, such as it was, to us. All of it is in Fuller's briefcase; you can memorize it at your leisure, then destroy it. A special task force was authorized to investigate cults in general and Coldwater's in particular, and I was picked to form it and lead it.”

“And naturally,” Jesse said, “the first person you wanted aboard was good ol' Jesse Warden.”

Barker managed a tight smile. “The last person, actually. But I didn't want to follow the ATF example of bureaucratic stupidity and lose a couple more men.”

“So you decided to lose me?”

“Christ knows you're expendable, Jesse, but you also have something to gain from all this.”

“I was hoping we'd get to that,” Jesse said. “Just what do I have to gain?”

“Your freedom, if you bring off the assignment. We're talking about a presidential pardon.”

“Oh, I love that,” Jesse said. “I suppose you have a letter from the president in your briefcase, confirming all this.”

“Of course not,” Barker said irritably. “You'll have to take my word for it.”

Jesse leaned forward. “Dan, before we go any farther there's something you'd better understand: I'll go back to prison before I'll take
your
word for a goddamned thing. Now let's stop wasting time; you tell me what you want done, and I'll tell you what you have to give me to do it. If we can't agree, then the hell with it.”

The hell with it, indeed. Jesse figured he could disable Kip, kill Barker and disappear before anybody knew it. The two of them probably had enough money on them to get him started, and he no longer resembled any existing photograph of himself. He'd have a better chance than he would back inside Atlanta Federal Prison.

“All right, let's get down to brass tacks,” Barker said. “As you'll see when you read the ATF reports, Coldwater appears to have two principal lieutenants: their names are Casey and Ruger, both ex-Special Forces. Both were on that boat with Coldwater, and a distillation of both their service records is in Fuller's briefcase. I want to know what this organization is doing, where they're getting their funding and what other organizations they're connected with. And I want hard evidence for at least one serious felony conviction—I'm talking twenty-five to life—for each of the three top men—Coldwater, Casey and Ruger. I intend to break up this outfit, and when you get the evidence, I want to
personally
make the arrests.”

“All right,” Jesse replied, “and here's what I want: I want a written agreement that guarantees me, first: an unconditional recommendation by the attorney general for a presidential pardon for
any
crime committed up to the actual date of the pardon; second: I want a hundred thousand dollars in cash; third: I want a completely new identity, tailored to
my
specifications and entry into the Justice Department's witness protection program; and finally: I want a package delivered to the adoptive parents of my daughter,
immediately
, which will contain a letter from me to my daughter, and you will secure their written agreement to give it to her no later than her twenty-first birthday. The agreement is to be
personally
endorsed,
in writing
, by the attorney general herself, and my obligations will be satisfied when Coldwater, Casey and Ruger are either dead or indicted for a serious felony.”

“Why dead?” Barker asked.

“So that, if you try to take these guys and you kill one or all of them, you won't be able to weasel out.”

Barker looked at Fuller. “Can we do this thing about the letter to his daughter?”

“I've spoken with the head of the adoption agency,” Fuller said. “I think she would be amenable to passing the package to the parents, but I don't think there's anything in the world we could do to force them to give the girl the letter. They might, but they might not.”

“All right,” Jesse said, “I'll settle for a letter from the head of the adoption agency swearing that she has passed the package to the adoptive parents.”

“I think I can get that,” Fuller said.

“And I can swing the rest,” Barker replied. “It's going to take me a couple of days, though, and you'll have to go back into the joint while I work things out.”

“No deal,” Jesse said vehemently. “There's a hotel in this city called the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead; Fuller and I will wait there in a suite, and I want my own bedroom.”

Fuller chimed in. “Dan, it'll give me a chance to brief Jesse on the new background we've got worked out for him, and that'll save us time.”

Barker turned back to Jesse. “I used to think of you as an honorable man. Will you give me your word that you will remain in Fuller's custody until I get back from Washington?”

“I give you my word on that,” Jesse said. “But no more chains.” There would be time enough later to kill Barker if he came back from Washington empty-handed.

“All right, you've got a deal,” Barker said. “But I'm damned if I'll shake your hand on it.”

That was just fine with Jesse.

J
esse sat at the dining table of a twelfth-floor suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead and polished off a large cut of prime rib. Elsewhere on the table were the remains of a loaded baked potato, a Caesar salad and a bottle of Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon (the reserve). He took another swig of the wine, then turned his attention to a large dish of macadamia brittle ice cream.

“Prison hasn't improved your table manners,” Kip Fuller said from across the table.

“You'll have to forgive me, Kip, but it's been a while since anybody cared.” The ice cream was sensational. “Why aren't you eating?”

“Because it's three o'clock in the afternoon, and I had lunch,” Fuller replied. “Are you sober enough after all that wine to start absorbing some detail?”

“Shoot.”

“Ordinarily, I'd just build you a legend for this job, but last week I got lucky.” He handed a large newspaper clipping across the table.

Jesse picked it up; it was from the Toccoa,
Georgia, newspaper:
LOCAL BUILDER'S FAMILY WIPED OUT IN DUI CRASH
.

He read a few paragraphs, then looked up at Fuller. “Okay, so the guy's name is Jesse; what else?”

“His wife and three daughters were killed in a head-on car crash.”

“I read that much.”

“What's not in the article is that the husband, one Jesse Barron, lived through the crash and was hospitalized with head injuries. When he recovered enough, he checked himself out of the hospital and disappeared. I talked to the local sheriff, who knew the man well, and he reckons he's a suicide; they just haven't found the body yet.”

“What else do you know about him?”

Fuller took a file folder from his briefcase and opened it. “Born in a place called Young Harris.”

“I know the town; not far from where I was born.”

“He's two years older than you are; went to North Georgia College, in Dahlonega, flunked out the first year. Single for a time, then married in his early thirties to one Sally Terrell, had three kids close together—daughters, Margie, Becky and Sherry, ages seven, five and four. The guy worked in construction in Atlanta for half a dozen companies, then moved to Toccoa a little over a year ago and started his own business. He was having a tough time of it, apparently—on the verge of bankruptcy, so the loss of his family wasn't his only reason for suicide.”

“He could have just taken a hike,” Jesse said.

“The sheriff doesn't think so. Barron had been drinking heavily, was depressed and had talked about suicide before the accident.”

“Sounds good. Anything unusual about the guy?”

“Very little. A high school football knee injury kept him out of the military, and he was too young for Vietnam, anyway. There is one delicious little detail,
though; something we'd have been hard put to invent.”

“What's that?”

“He was arrested nine years ago in a fight; he was one of a group of hecklers who were badgering a black couple who had bought a house in a white neighborhood.”

“I like it,” Jesse said. “A nice little credential. Was he a member of the Klan or anything?”

“I checked with the FBI—they've got a man in just about every Klan organization. He was actually on a list of people approached about joining, but he never did. It shows that the guy must have had a reputation for bad talk around town.”

“Good. What did he look like?”

Fuller handed over a small color photograph. “This was his driver's license picture. A little smaller than you, and fatter, but you could be him after a car crash.”

Jesse nodded. “Does he have any family?”

“A grandfather in a county nursing home—in his nineties and ga-ga. That's it.”

“How'd you come across this guy? You don't read the Toccoa, Georgia, newspaper.”

“No, but researchers at Justice do; they keep an eye out for identities that could be used in the witness protection program. I've also got a name from Alabama, but he's not nearly as good—too many relatives. The nice thing about Jesse Barron is that he's from your part of the state, so your accents are probably similar.”

“If he's from Young Harris, they certainly are. What happens if Barron's body turns up?”

“The sheriff has agreed to keep it quiet,” Fuller saia. “There's nobody to notify, no heirs, nothing to leave them if there were any. The guy was living in a rented trailer.” He pushed the file across the table to Jesse.

Jesse looked through it; it was complete down to Barron's failing grades his first and only year in college. “Sold,” he said. “Now let's talk about this town in Idaho. What was it called?”

“St. Clair. It's a one-industry town—a chipboard manufacturing company called St. Clair Wood Products. Family-owned, employs around four hundred people. We've been subscribing to the local weekly newspaper, the
Standard
, for a while and, apart from jobs in the local stores, county government, the sheriff's office, that sort of thing, Wood Products is about it.”

“Any black people in town?”

“None. A few Indians.”

“If this guy Coldwater is half Indian, what's he doing as head of something called Aryan Universe?”

“Apparently, they consider the Indians as some sort of racially pure strain; I know, it's bizarre.”

“What sort of ideas have you got about infiltrating?” Jesse asked.

“Maybe you, as Barron, could set up some sort of small business, maybe remodeling of houses, like Barron? You had some construction experience in your past, didn't you?”

“I worked summers at house building when I was in high school and college. I'm fairly handy, but God help the person whose house I tried to remodel.”

“Well, then.”

“I don't like it; two guys have already gone in there in regular middle-class jobs. If Coldwater is recruiting, I doubt it's from that bunch. He's likely to want a more disappointed kind of recruit, I would think; somebody who's pissed off at the world. Certainly Barron, if he were alive, would have a lot to be pissed off about—he's lost his family and his business. Tell me, was the drunk who hit his family black?”

“I'll find out. I think you've got a good idea about the guy being disappointed. How would you infiltrate?”

“Maybe just drift in there, look for work, drink at the local beer joint, see who's who around St. Clair. If Barron suddenly turned up, would the local cops want to talk to him about anything? Did he do anything illegal?”

“Nothing like that in the record.”

“So I could use Barron's name with no fear of his name ringing alarms if he got busted for speeding or something?”

“Why not? That way, if somebody did some checking on him, we'd know exactly what they'd find. He's got a social security number and that's helpful, if you're going to look for work—and we could have a word with some of Barron's former construction employers in Atlanta, alert them for requests for references.”

“Okay, let's do it that way. What about a driver's license and credit cards? I'd like to have one working credit card in my pocket.”

Fuller looked through some papers. “His credit report says he's got a Visa, but it's tapped out and way overdue. I'll fix something up with the bank and have them issue a new card. As for the driver's license, I can get one made up with your picture on it. Hang on, I've got a Polaroid camera in my luggage.” Fuller got up and went to his bedroom.

Jesse wiped off the hefty steak knife the Ritz-Carlton had furnished with the prime rib, slipped it under his belt in the small of his back and tucked his shirttail in over it. He had still to hear from Dan Barker, and he meant to be ready if he didn't like what he heard.