The day after the Snohomish County sheriff’s department had passed the deputy’s information along to the FBI, Griff had driven from the Seattle Field Office and taken over a seldom-used Forest Service fire tower with a pretty good view of the farm. Without asking permission, he had instructed two agents to chainsaw the single obstructing tree. He had then set up his surveillance. Seattle Field Office Special Agent in Charge John Keller had put Griff in command of the operation, but provisionally, in case it threatened to turn into another Waco.
FBI headquarters wanted to be very sure of their footing before they made a move.
Other agents had worked their way into Prince, the nearest town: a gas station, hardware/feed store, three churches, and a diner. They had learned that three women and at least seven children picked up groceries and sometimes their mail in Prince. Less frequently, the citizens saw four men ranging in age from seventeen to thirty-five. The family or families also drove into Prince for church services. Chambers himself never ventured into town. The best guess was that Chambers had about twenty men, women, and children living on his farm.
Their church was a thorny cane of the original Seventh Day Adventist bush known as The Empty Tomb of God Risen. Tombers, FBI files said, showed strong anti-Semitic tendencies, often associated with Christian Identity types, and were allied in some northwestern states with Aryan Nations. Their ministers were banned from visiting federal prisons.
Upon learning this, Griff had contacted Jacob Levine.
They took turns looking through the binoculars while the
computer used a satellite link to try to make facial comparisons with National Security Service records in Virginia.
‘What are all those posts and clothes lines for?’ Rebecca asked.
Griff shrugged. ‘You tell me.’
‘Looks like an antenna. TV, maybe?’
‘Even Jed Clampett has a dish out here,’ Benson said.
Two women stood on the porch. One was knitting and the other just stared out over the long span of weedy lawn in front of the main house. They were talking but there was no way of knowing what they were saying. At this angle and that distance, the lip-reading software on the computer wasn’t much good.
‘They look nervous,’ Benson observed.
‘Chambers starts out charming but in the end he rules by force,’ Levine said. ‘He picks women who want nothing but guidance and routine, but that doesn’t mean he makes them happy. Though he does provide, in his way, and he loves his kids. In his way.’
‘They’re all his?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Chambers has never shared his harem,’ Levine said. ‘He teaches his sons to be crack shots but forbids his wives or daughters to use guns, ever. When are you planning to make a raid?’
Griff winced at the word ‘raid’ but he did not answer in the negative. Something would have to be done and he would likely be at the tip of the spear going in. ‘Not until we know all there is to know,’ he said.
‘There could be an opportune moment,’ Levine said. ‘That is, if what the guys in town have found out is true—about them being Tombers.’
‘Do tell,’ Griff said.
‘It is likely the women and children will all go to Easter services at the church, and that could be a good time to find Chambers home alone, or at most with his eldest son in
attendance. He insists on piety but I’ve never heard of his entering a church, not since he was a kid. He needs to be top dog wherever he stands, and that includes before God.’
‘No way we’re going in at Easter,’ Griff said. ‘Besides, people in town are alerted. We can’t afford to wait.’
Levine smiled. ‘You’re in luck. Tombers are Julians. They believe Easter comes before the date commonly observed by you
goyim
. They’re eleven days off. The Gregorian calendar is the work of the devil, you know.’
‘Scout’s honor?’ Griff asked. He was looking through the scope now. A Coleman lantern had been slung on a beam inside the porch overhang and the two women were setting up folding chairs.
‘For them, Good Friday is tomorrow.’
Then, down in the valley, the old man finally came out and stood watching the twilight. His face was clear in the bright white glow of the lantern: an aquiline, craggy profile. The old man appeared thoughtful. For a moment, Griff thought he might be watching them.
Rebecca folded her arms. ‘Just the kind of fellow to need a microbial incubator.’
Griff set the digital cameras humming and backed away. ‘Is that him?’ he asked Levine.
Levine peered. ‘I hope I look that good when I’m his age.’
‘Whenever you’re sure, Jacob.’
Levine spent a few more seconds on the binoculars. ‘It’s him,’ he said.
William Griffin jogged across the lawn to join the group of nine students standing in front of the Biograph theater, on the edge of Hogantown and just across Hoover Road from the towering dorms and walkways and the squat tan bulk of the Academy.
‘All right, listen up,’ Pete Farrow called out. The recruits—two women and seven men: two blacks, one Asian, one Middle-Eastern, five shades of white—stopped talking and assumed parade rest. Compared to the instructor they were a motley bunch, spread over the range of physical specimens: plump and skinny, tall and short, dark-haired and light.
Farrow walked along the loose line. ‘All right, agents, this is it. Today, you will be using equipment worth about two hundred thousand dollars. Try not to break it. Only about twenty percent of our field offices have all this stuff. It is rare. It is valuable. But it is the future—and you will get used to it.
‘If you are a sadist, you are shit out of luck. Some of this new stuff threatens to turn you bloody-minded SOBs into kinder, gentler peace officers.’ Farrow winked in the general direction of William Griffin. ‘Out on the street, if you do this right, nobody has to die. Though I do expect a few sprained ankles and wrenched necks, and we have been known to break arms and even legs. Understood?’
The class nodded in unison.
Three men in gray suits passed behind the students and
entered the Bank of Hogantown. They were carrying bagged sandwiches from the Pastime Deli. One turned and said, ‘Farrow’s litter. What do you think? Blood in the gutters?’ The others flashed evil smiles and pushed through the swinging glass doors.
William watched Jane Rowland scratch her ribs under her suit coat and the white FBI Academy golf-style shirt. His underwear itched, too. Something about the diagnostic sensors embedded in the bulletproof weave or the fluid piping that smoothly wrapped around the torso.
Medium-sized piles of equipment lay at their feet. They would soon put on masks and special network jackets. More weight, more wires.
In their holsters they carried blue-handled revolvers filled with paint ball rounds. The Academy cars were equipped with pump-action shotguns with blue stocks that discharged a nasty, smelly pink spray, and mock H&K MP5 9mm carbines that fired nothing but made a horrible racket—all networked training weapons. Everything they did with these guns showed up on monitors somewhere in the recesses of Hogantown.
‘You have made your case,’ Farrow said. ‘You are now about to arrest four suspects who are transporting an illegal substance for sale. This is no longer the good old days of cocaine or heroin. Neuraminoline tartrate, known on the street as Tart, is colorless, odorless, and tasteless—but it is the most dangerous and destructive GM drug on the market today. Loser users tell themselves that Tart is a harmless organic performance enhancer. It produces long-lasting feelings of angelic well-being. But in five percent of its devotees, Tart leads to a degenerative neuromuscular disease called Kepler’s Syndrome. You end up in a wheelchair, drooling, unable to control your bowels and in constant pain. But that’s not the end of Tart’s charms. In an estimated seven percent of users, Tart binds to chromosomes in sex cells—
eggs and sperm. It causes distortions that can be passed on to future offspring, who, if they survive beyond the age of two, will suffer the agonies of the damned. Tart makes babies into monsters.’ Farrow slipped on his grid-linked gogs—short for goggles, but actually more like a thick-framed pair of glasses. ‘If that doesn’t psych you for this bust nothing will. Remember—if you screw up, your classmates could get hurt. I do not like to have my heart flutter. I do not want to grieve for lost ducklings. Stay tactical. Use all the skills we’ve taught you. Ready?’
‘Ready!’ they shouted.
‘Suit up and get your Lynxes on the grid. Today we’re all top code, to keep the bad guys from knowing who and where you are, so line up and get your numbers.’ He began handing out strips of paper.
William Griffin put on his gogs and field jacket, labeled with a strip of silver tape with his name on it. He ran his index finger along the bumps and ridges on the forearm Lynx keyboard, logging on to the team server and inputting his number and five fake numbers and positions that his node would disperse like chaff, should someone hack in. The others did the same. They all stood clutching their paintball masks, clear visors with plastic headbands. Cheeks, temples, and ears were no longer protected—hadn’t been for years. Pain was a teacher, a tool.
They then clipped health stats boxes to their belts and arranged their shoulder-mounted holsters. Farrow checked them over, as solicitous as a mother hen.
‘Keep boxy stuff away from your mid-back. Clip everything to the side. If you fall backward on a hard surface, you could injure your spine.’
They sheepishly readjusted. This was basic stuff and already they were screwing up.
Farrow checked his slate. ‘Mr. Al-Husam, you’re not on the grid. Get your numbers.’
Fouad Al-Husam, a small man with beautiful black eyes and a round, almost feminine face, touched his keyboard, trying to find the bumps. Farrow approached him and patted his jacket sleeve. ‘Here,’ he said, and lifted Al-Husam’s arm to the right place. ‘Follow the guide ridges.’ Al-Husam smiled but his face darkened with embarrassment.
‘Still not there,’ Farrow said after a few seconds. ‘Reboot your pad. I have eight Lynxes on the grid, all healthy and happy. I see code in action. Good scatter. Ms. Lee, are you happy?’
Lee was the shortest and lightest person in the group but that did not faze Farrow. He was running her hard through her paces. ‘Yes, sir, I am happy,’ she called out.
‘Happy to be here at the Q?’
‘Sir, I am very happy to be here at the Q.’
‘We are not Gyrenes, Ms. Lee. Academy mandates snappy repartee. Show me your FBI beef.’
‘Happy as an aardvark under a full moon…at the Q, sir.’
Farrow’s grin was tepid. ‘Is wit truly dead?’ He glanced around the group, raising his shoulders in a long, sad shrug.
They all laughed.
‘
Focus
,’ Farrow shouted. ‘You’ve been working toward this moment for three weeks. You have the bastards in your sights. Remember your training. You ARE ready.’
William quietly sucked in his breath. He was far from sure of that. Standing beside him, Jane Rowland looked confident—hard as a piece of glass and about as brittle.
‘Okay—Al-Husam, you’re on the grid. You can stop fiddling with the keys.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You are knights in high-tech armor,’ Farrow said. ‘Make the flame-tormented shade of Mr. Hoover proud. Let’s go.’
‘Right, coach,’ William Griffin said under his breath as they fanned out.
They dispersed as four teams in four vehicles. William and Jane Rowland had drawn chits and were partnered for the bust. They climbed into an unmarked tan Caprice from the last century. Rowland took the wheel. ‘Ready?’ she asked William, face forward.
‘I am
icy.
’ He grinned.
Rowland rotated and poked her finger. ‘Don’t mess up,’ she instructed. ‘We have our docs, right?’
William held up his steno pad and a plastic folder full of paper-copy warrants and mug shots. The actors in the shots looked tough and bored.
‘We’ll do fine,’ he said. ‘You’ll do great.’
Rowland gave William a
don’t patronize me
scowl and cinched her seat belt. A helicopter blew overhead. Rowland flinched. Hostage Rescue Team personnel dressed in black and armed to the teeth hung out of the chopper doors like commandoes, waiting to abseil down to a roof. Hogantown could get crowded and noisy. Ten or twelve practicals could fill any given day.
‘Yeah. Right,’ Rowland said. She started the Caprice, pulled out onto Hogan Boulevard and drove around the corner and down Ness Avenue to their stake-out, just across the two-way street from the Giga-Mart parking lot. The suspects had been sighted shopping there this morning by an alert police officer, who had traced one of the men back to the Dogwood Hotel and the other to the Tolson Arms apartments. The Dogwood was across the street from the Giga-Mart. The Giga-Mart was small but functional. Its shelves had been stocked with goods that agents and Marines could buy but its clerks doubled as actors in Academy scenarios.
William put on his gogs and waited for the display to come up. The data and graphics looked greenish blue in the daytime, red at night. A little bell dinged in his earnode. He heard his own pulse magnified. He sounded nervous. He
checked the pong sensor that detected human stress chemistry. The watch displayed three green lights, one yellow. Yeah, he was nervous. So was Rowland.
William glanced up at the Eyes in the Sky—cameras jutting out over the intersection from a power pole on the corner. A red light was on—surveillance was underway. The Masters of the Universe, agent instructors in the second floor command center above the Bank of Hogan, were waiting to pass judgment. MAVs—Micro Air Vehicles equipped with cameras—buzzed overhead.
William and Rowland were to take point once the suspects had been spotted. Team two and team three would serve as reinforcements and backup as each arrest was made. Team four would stand ready to intercept fleeing vehicles if necessary.
‘Team one to all teams,’ William said. Their grid lights blinked in his gogs. ‘Are we set?’
‘Team two in rear view of your position,’ came the response through their earnodes. That was Matty’s soft drawl—George Matty and Al-Husam had been partnered, almost certainly to Matty’s displeasure. He was a deep Mississippi boy and generally kept quiet around Al-Husam, but so far had played things professionally. And well he might. Al-Husam was special, they all knew that. Bigger judges than the Masters of the Universe were looking down on Quantico this year.
‘Team three here. We’re at Tolson Arms.’ Team three was Errol Henson, Nicky Di Martinez, and Carla Lee. They were in the dark blue engineering van, equipped for surveillance and carrying the Lynx server.
‘Team four setting up on State Street.’ Team four was Finch and Greavy, heavy-set men with bulldog expressions and quiet, efficient manners. ‘We’d like video hookups as soon as possible. Let us know which way they’re coming, gang.’
‘Apartment twelve at Tolson has motion,’ Lee said. ‘Lights are on.’
‘What’s parked out front, team three?’ William asked.
‘Five cars and a pickup,’ Errol Henson responded. His voice trembled. They were all high with excitement, like a brace of puppies chasing ducks for the first time.
William glanced at Rowland. She pressed her lips together.
‘Our suspect, Geronimo del Torres, is driving a 1959 Chevy Impala, primer gray with mottled paint, tinted windows, a work in progress, according to our sheet,’ Lee said.
‘We don’t see it,’ Henson said. ‘I like Impalas.’
Someone else said, ‘I catch and eat Impalas.’
‘Identify, joker,’ Farrow growled in all their ears, his voice like an angry God.
‘Team two, that’s me, Matty, sir.’
‘Tongues in neutral, team two.’
‘Yes, sir. Wit, sir.’
‘Team three here. A man and a woman, both Hispanic, are leaving unit twelve. They’re getting into a late model blue Camaro, license plate Wonka MF8905. Neither resembles del Torres.’
Hogantown police activities involved residents of five fictitious states: Graceland, Oceania, Sylvania, Wonka, and Numbutt. White-collar criminals usually came from Sylvania, smart crooks and contraband dealers of any stripe from Graceland; violent crooks from Wonka; drug dealers and dumb-asses from Numbutt. Profiling on that basis, however, was discouraged.
Matty pushed his head back against the neck rest. ‘I watched you in Rough-and-Tough. Very impressive.’
‘Thank you,’ Fouad Al-Husam said.
‘Natural born killer instinct.’
‘Not so killer,’ Al-Husam said. ‘They are images and cutouts, not people.’
‘Felt real to me. I wanted to throw up.’
‘Perhaps so did I,’ Al-Husam said.
‘Arabs don’t naturally like killing? That’s kind of news, isn’t it?’
‘I am not Arab,’ Al-Husam said, and he looked out of the car side window to avoid showing his irritation.
Matty glanced at Al-Husam. ‘I always feel like praying before going into practicals. How about you?’
Al-Husam nodded. ‘A little prayer,’ he said.
‘You pray five times a day, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘I hope you don’t need to get down and pray right here,’ Matty said. ‘That would be inconvenient.’
Al-Husam took a shallow breath.
‘Five times a day. That’s more than my grandma used to do. She and my mama put me off praying. They were always asking for little things. “God, make my garden green. God, let me grow the prettiest roses, the biggest tomatoes. God, I hope the pot roast doesn’t burn.” See what I mean? But going through Quantico, I totally get it. “God, don’t let me screw up.” Where
do
you pray when you have to?’
‘Wherever there is room. Shall we concentrate?’ Al-Husam asked.
‘I
am
concentrating. Got it. Hoo-ah!’ Matty exclaimed, and touched his gogs.
Al-Husam jerked in surprise, that this man should proclaim
Huwa,
the name of the essence,
Qul Huwa Llahu Ahad—Say, He is God, He is One.
‘That plate was on the board,’ Matty said, triumphant. ‘Let’s run a check before the others catch it.’
‘Of course,’ Al-Husam said.
William twitched in his worn bucket seat. ‘We had a bulletin on that vehicle,’ he said to Rowland. ‘I saw it in the briefing room.’ He pulled out his notebook and flipped through the pages, then resorted to the button pad hidden in his sleeve, to bring up the case on his gogs. Before he
could find what he wanted, in his ear he heard Matty saying, ‘We ID that as belonging to a Constanza Valenzuela, registered guest worker from Honduras, no criminal record, nothing on VICAP.’
William frowned intensely at Rowland. ‘I’m sure there’s more,’ he said. Both worked their keypads. William’s face brightened and he parted his lips.
Al-Husam broke in before he could speak. ‘We have info that Ms. Valenzuela has gone missing in Wonka and that her car has not been located.’