The Fourth Rising (Peter Brandt Thrillers Book 3)

by Martin Roy Hill

  “We got search warrants signed a few hours ago,” Sanders said. “Russo and his team are serving them on MacIntosh’s place in La Jolla, and the offices of the League and World-Wide. We figure they had to take her to one of those places.”

  “And if they didn’t? What then?”

  “We’ll find her, Brandt,” Sanders said, but his voice lacked resolve. “We’ll find her.”

  “I want to help,” I said.

  “I’m here to take you to the FBI offices,” Sanders said. “Their command post for the raids is set up there.”

  I returned to the house, tossed the little automatic on my desk, and locked the door. Back outside, I said, “Then let’s go, damn it.”

  Sanders lit up emergency lights hidden behind his sedan’s grill as we bounded along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard onto the I-8 freeway. He wove the vehicle around the morning rush-hour traffic, took a high-speed detour onto Mission Valley’s surface streets, then jumped onto State Route 163 heading north, all the time rarely slowing his speed below sixty. My right hand held a bloodless grip on the passenger armrest but I still wanted him to go faster.

  Sanders watched me from the corner of his eye. “You okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Worry about Jo.”

  Sanders pulled into the FBI parking lot, and I was out the door before the car came to a full stop. Sanders rushed to catch up with me as I entered the building, and escorted me through the labyrinth of hallways to the tactical command center. Russo, dressed in shirt sleeves, stood at the front of the cavernous room, talking on a cell phone and reading from a stack of papers held in his free hand. Behind him large screen displays flashed images from the staging areas for each raid team. Russo didn’t see me coming until I knocked the phone from his hand and shoved him up against the far wall.

  “What have you done?” I said. “Where is she? How the hell could you lose her, you sorry son of a bitch?”

  Sanders and two FBI men pulled me off Russo. The agent glared at me as he recovered his balance, but the fire in his eyes flickered and went out. He straightened his shirt and nodded to his men.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Let him go. I guess we owe him that.”

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  Someone handed Russo his cell phone. He checked it, then slipped it into his pocket.

  “We don’t know,” Russo said. “Yet. We’ve got teams poised to serve warrants simultaneously at World-Wide, the League, and MacIntosh’s house in La Jolla. They’re good warrants, too, Brandt. If we have to, we’ll tear each building down to its foundation. We’ll find her.”

  “And if you don’t?” I said.

  Russo frowned and looked away. “We’ll find her. We will.”

  I doubt he believed his own words any more than I did. I looked around the command post feeling helpless, the helplessness breeding more anger. But I knew the rage was useless and unproductive. I nodded and said, “What can I do?”

  “The same as the rest of us here,” Russo said. “Wait.”

  CHAPTER 34

  SO, WE WAITED.

  One bank of screens in the command post flickered with closed-circuit video broadcasts from each of the sites showing the teams serving the warrants and entering the buildings.

  And we waited.

  A second bank of television screens showed news coverage of the searches, and of the protests from MacIntosh and other League and World-Wide officials. Occasionally a raid team had to stop its search while lawyers for MacIntosh, the League, or World-Wide contested the warrants in court.

  So, we waited some more.

  True to his word, Russo ordered his men to tear each of the locations apart. They searched each nook and every cranny in all three structures. They brought in sophisticated ground penetrating radar equipment to sweep the grounds at each site, even using it indoors to locate any hidden rooms or compartments. They removed the overhead ceiling panels and searched between floors. The hunt took hours, and we waited.

  And they found nothing.

  By eight o’clock in the evening, the teams gave up. The news broadcasts showed them packing their equipment and driving away, while MacIntosh and his crowd smirked and waved. The League director stepped before a knot of reporters and took questions.

  “Turn that up,” Russo ordered.

  “…totally unwarranted invasion of my home and harassment of my family,” MacIntosh said. “This is nothing less than another attack on our constitutional rights and freedoms by an overzealous and politically motivated federal agency. We must fight this kind of tyrannical governmental intrusion with each breath, with each beat of our hearts…”

  “Constitutional rights? This son-of-a-bitch is a fascist,” I muttered. “Worse, a Nazi.”

  “Dictators don’t achieve power by announcing their intent to enslave people, Brandt,” Sanders said. “That’s bad P.R.”

  “They’re always the first to claim violations of their personal rights,” Russo added, “and the last to grant those same rights to anyone else.”

  MacIntosh turned away from the cameras and, still smiling, got into his chauffeured limousine and departed.

  The crowd in the command post also filtered away. I stood at the front of the room and watched them leave, my chest aching with fear and anger. I glanced at Sanders. He shook his head. I looked at Russo and he turned away.

  “That’s it?” I said. “That’s all you’re doing?”

  Russo turned to face me. His face was slack with weariness, his eyes red and swollen. He looked like a man whose worst fear had come true. Then, as if flipping a switch, the fire came back into his eyes.

  “No, it is not all we’re doing,” he said. “It’s all we can do right now. We have BOLOs out to every law enforcement agency in the county to scour their jurisdictions for any hint, any clue that might lead us to Ms. Rice. We will find her, Brandt, we will.”

  “What about Tygard?” I said. “He’s got a mole in the League. Maybe he knows where they took her.”

  Russo and I looked at Sanders.

  “I’ve made several calls to him, but I just keep getting his voicemail,” Sanders said. “I haven’t heard back from him yet.”

  Russo sighed, and his shoulders sagged again.

  “The only thing you can do now, Brandt, is go home and get some rest.” Russo nodded toward Sanders, who took my arm and guided me out the door.

  Neither of us spoke on the drive back to OB. When we reached my place, Sanders said, “By the way, we kept a surveillance crew outside your house. They reported World-Wide sent a crew to remove the bugs. Our guys followed them, but they only went back to World-Wide’s offices. The raid team took them into custody on suspicion of illegal eavesdropping.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Sanders cleared his throat, then said, “I’ll call you in the morning when I know what’s going on.”

  I nodded my thanks, and he drove off.

  Jack greeted me at the door with a gruff, demanding meow, then trotted into the kitchen to wait for his dinner. I fed him, ate a little myself, then poured a drink. My body ached, my eyes burned, and my thoughts were clouded with fear—fear of losing Jo, fear of what MacIntosh and the League might do to her. I took a cigarette from my nightmare stash, went out onto the porch and lit it. In what seemed only seconds, it was finished. I retrieved another and smoked it slowly.

  It was a quiet night. Either the airport shifted its take-off pattern away from OB or it had shut down early. The sky was clear. The moon was full and cast a blue-white shimmer on the cars parked along the street. I could hear breakers crashing on the beach and, beyond that, the tolling of a sea buoy. Somewhere in the neighborhood I heard a dog howling, a long-throated song like that of a wolf baying at the moon.

  The cigarette stopped halfway to my mouth. It slipped from my fingers and landed on the porch in an explosion of red embers. I stomped it out, rushed into the house, fumbled through my jacket for Sanders’ business card, and dialed his cell
number. I got his voicemail.

  “Sanders, Brandt,” I said. “I think I may know where they took Jo. Those skinheads the League use as their private army—you know, the Werewolves? They have a training camp up in Alpine. They call it the Alpine Redoubt. Not sure where in Alpine, but it shouldn’t be hard to find. I’m heading up there now.”

  Next I called Cindy and asked her to look after Jack for the next few days. I grabbed the .25 from the desk where I’d left it that morning, then took the ankle holster and two extra magazines from the nightstand. Jack nervously circled my ankles, so I picked him up and held him. He purred, but he didn’t sit easy in my arms. I guess even cats worry about those they love.

  “I’ll find her, Jack,” I said, and let him jump from my grip.

  A minute later, I burned half my tire tread as I headed the Mustang east toward the Cuyamaca Mountains and the little town of Alpine.

  ☼

  Compared to the morning rush-hour traffic, Interstate 8 at night looked deserted. I pushed the Mustang as fast as I dared as I weaved between the few vehicles still meandering through Mission Valley, my eye checking the rearview mirror for the red and blue lights of the highway patrol. I thought about my best course of action if a Chippie lit me up. Should I stop and plead my case for assistance, or do I engage in a high-speed chase and lead a convoy of cop cars up to the Alpine Redoubt?

  There was little navigation needed to get to Alpine. I-8 led to it like an asphalt snake winding its way up the mountain. I hadn’t been there in years, and the little mountain village I remembered was no more. New homes sprawled along bulldozed ridges and down into canyons. At the center of its growth was an Indian casino that opened in 1991, changing Alpine from a cozy weekend getaway into a high-class tourist destination. If I hadn’t been otherwise preoccupied, it would have made me miss the easy-going ways of La Playa de Cortés.

  I nosed the Mustang into one of those gas stations that also serves as a mini-market and filled my tank. Inside the store, I picked up a local map and a cup of black coffee. The clerk behind the counter was tall and lean, with a long and thin face, sparse black hair, and half-moon readers perched on his nose. As he rung up my purchases, he nodded toward the map.

  “In town for a visit?” he said in a nasally twang better suited for New England than Southern California.

  I nodded. “You know of a place around here called the Alpine Redoubt?”

  The eyes behind the glasses narrowed, and his face jutted toward me. “We don’t like them kind of people around here, mister,” he said in a slow and unfriendly voice.

  “What kind of people?”

  “Them skinheads,” he said. “Nothin’ but a bunch of weirdo troublemakers.” He looked me up and down. “You one of them, then git.”

  I shook my head, pulled one of my business cards out, and dropped it on the counter. He looked at through his readers without picking it up, and sniffed.

  “Some kind of reporter?”

  “Yeah, I’m researching a group of skinheads calling themselves the Werewolves,” I said. “Dress all in black.”

  “Yep, that’s them,” the clerk said.

  “I’m trying to locate this camp they have called the Alpine Redoubt,” I said. “Heard of it?”

  The clerk frowned, but nodded. “Yep, I know it. Most of the folks around here do.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Them skinheads don’t make themselves scarce,” he said. “They like to come to town and get in the face of the tribal members. The tribe made this town, you see? We don’t cotton to weirdos messing with our business.”

  “I can certainly understand that,” I said. “Do you know where this redoubt is?”

  “Ye-yep.” He opened my map. “Hard to miss them, especially now.”

  “How so?”

  “They’s got something going on out there. Something big,” the clerk said. “Been a gaggle of them driving through town for days now. Heading east. To here.”

  His finger landed on a spot outside the edge of the developed town.

  “What’s there?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Guess that’s why they like it out there. Nothing there but that big camp of theirs.”

  “How do I find it?”

  His finger traced the route, and I inked it in with my pen.

  “Once you get past the old Darlington place, look for a dirt road going off to your right,” he said. “If you miss it, you’ll come to a dead end. Just turn yourself ’round and look for the dirt road. Follow that two or three miles and you’ll come to their camp. But mister?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’s got guards, guards with guns,” he said. “And they ain’t friendly little pukes. No, sirree.”

  CHAPTER 35

  I MISSED THE TURN onto the dirt road and reached the dead end described by the store clerk. As I executed a Y-turn to reverse course, I spotted a set of headlights barreling toward me. I turned my lights off, finished the Y-turn, and waited.

  It was one of those monster-truck guys with latent masculinity problems drive—high off the ground, enough cylinders to power a cargo ship, and a light bar on the roof that made the vehicle look like a giant, metal insect. The high-intensity lamps came on as the driver turned onto the dirt road. A stereo blared a martial song with Germanic music but English lyrics:

  Clear the streets for the black battalions,

  Clear the streets for the storm division!

  Upon the swastika, full of hope, look millions.

  The day of freedom and of liberty begins!

  I recognized the lyrics from Glasgow’s book. It was a bastardized version of the Horst Wessel Song, the German Nazi Party’s anthem, with the Werewolves’ black battalions replacing the original SA brownshirt troops. I had no desire to run into that monster truck and its monstrous soundtrack, so I waited several minutes before turning onto the dirt road.

  The road was narrow and rutted, hard on the Mustang’s suspension, and the thick, matted layer of tree branches overhead blocked the moonlight. I kept my headlights off, running on the smaller fog lamps which barely penetrated the dark. The road meandered through the trees for two miles until, up ahead, I saw a faint glow. I pulled the Mustang into a small clearing hidden from the trail and went on foot, keeping inside the tree line. While reporting on the wars down south, I learned to avoid walking on trails that might be mined or lead to an ambush. Here I just wanted to avoid any more Horst Wessel serenades from muscle trucks.

  About another mile up the road, the woodlands ended and a gentle, rolling scrubland took its place. The glow I followed was from large spotlights illuminating a compound surrounded by tall cyclone fencing topped with barbed wire. The dirt road ended at a gate manned by armed Werewolves in black. Beyond the gate were several low-slung buildings, some made of wood, others of stucco, all a dull off-white with red shake roofs. Somewhere a speaker belted out the Horst Wessel Song, minus the crappy lyrics. Off to the left was a parking lot crammed with vehicles, mostly pickup trucks. Several flew Confederate battle flags; others flew a variety of flags with neo-Nazi motifs. Black-clad Werewolves milled about or stood in groups, while others goose-stepped in formation.

  One building stood out from the others, taller and wider, its white paint brighter, with a large main entrance surrounded on each side by smaller doors. It was clinker-built with wall boards overlapping each other. Large, shake-covered eaves overhung the first-floor windows, which were small, set high, and curtained. It had a steepled roof suggestive of a mountain lodge. A large balcony jutted out from an upper floor, and I saw two Werewolves adjusting spotlights to shine on a stand of microphones while another man in a military uniform supervised them. Two flag poles straddled the main entrance. The red, white, and black blood flag of the Nazi Party fluttered and snapped from one pole. The other held a limp and dispirited American flag. It was obviously a headquarters building. I knew if they brought Jo here that’s where they would hold her.

  I followed the fence li
ne, moving away from the main gate, looking for another way in. There wasn’t one. I cursed, turned, and trotted back to my car.

  When I got back to the Mustang, I tried calling Sanders again, but there was no cell service. I cursed and considered my options. Do I drive back to town and call Sanders or Russo, then wait for what could be hours while they organized a raid? And what would Jo endure while I was waiting? That wasn’t an option, and there weren’t any other options save one. I took a floor mat from the Mustang and headed back to the Alpine Redoubt.

  After locating the darkest spot along the fence line, I approached it, careful not to make any undue noise—and tripped over a broken tree limb, landing face first on the ground with a loud grunt. I started to toss the limb away when I had a better idea. With the branch held in front of me like a sword, I walked toward the fence. When close enough, I tossed the limb into the chain link, and ducked.

  Nothing.

  Satisfied it wasn’t electrified, I scaled the fence, laid the car mat over the barbed wire, and slipped over it to the other side. Not wanting to leave evidence of my intrusion, I pulled on the mat. It resisted, snagged on the barbs. I tugged again, and it still didn’t move. I left the mat hanging on the fence and hoped the Werewolves weren’t smart enough to have a roving guard walking the perimeter.

  ☼

  I’d done my share of creeping around in the dark, and anyone who says you get used to it is a liar. Every noise you make—the crunch of gravel beneath your shoe, the rustle of your clothing, even your own breathing—seems cacophonous. Figures move in every shadow, but there’s nothing there; it’s only the movement of your own eyes playing tricks on you. My watch said it took less than two minutes to cross the distance between the fence line and the headquarters building. It seemed like two octogenarian lifetimes to me.

  Dim light fell from curtained windows, illuminating my steps as I skirted the edge of the building, but also exposing me. Voices came from the windows, muffled and indistinguishable, ebbing and flowing as I moved from one to the other. The building’s rear was less vulnerable. Fewer windows there, less light, less vulnerability. A single back entrance stood on a small porch lit by a dim, uncovered bulb. I crept to the porch and hunkered in its shadow, breathing hard not from exertion but from an overdose of adrenalin.