Rose City Kill Zone

by D L Barbur

Bolle bristled and started to speak, but she cut him off.

  “We all bear some of the blame in this,” she said. “Right now what you have going for you is almost nobody knows you are here. The FBI is taking the heat for this. It’s a shit storm like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The drone shows almost twenty bodies on the ranch grounds. Most of them have a weapon next to them, but plenty of them don’t. We’re negotiating right now to get wounded, and people who want to surrender out of the compound.”

  “They’re willing to negotiate?” Bolle asked.

  “Webb is being fairly reasonable. He knows he can’t escape, and he can’t hold out forever. He’s just trying to cut the best deal for himself. Marshall is ranting and raving about a revolution and refusing to talk to anybody but the local sheriff. The shrinks think there is a good chance he’ll try to go out in a blaze of glory.”

  “And take plenty of people with him,” I said.

  “That’s exactly what we don’t want,” Burke said. “He keeps making hints that he’s got information that could put a bunch of people in prison. I want that guy sitting in an interview room spilling his guts.”

  “What are we offering him?” Bolle asked. His eyes didn’t quite slide over to look at me, but I could tell he was fighting the urge.

  “It depends on what he has,” Burke said. Then she did look at me. “And everybody needs to be ok with that.”

  I wanted Marshall dead or in prison. From moment to moment, that preference could change. The thought of him walking away in some kind of immunity deal stuck in my throat. His people had almost killed Mandy, killed my best friend, taken my job, and burned my damn house down.

  But then again, if he was out walking around, I would be able to find him eventually.

  “I’ll play ball with whatever happens,” I said. It sounded hesitant even to my own ears.

  Burke didn’t look like she believed me but she let it go for now.

  “What now?” Bolle asked.

  “Right now you’re going to report directly to me. I’m guessing Laughlin will be relieved of command, but I’m not sure who his replacement will be. I don’t think anybody sees this shit sandwich as a career enhancer. I need you to stay flexible. Your people don’t have the firepower to storm that place, and I wouldn’t want you to even if you did. But right now I need information more than I need trigger pullers.”

  That was the first sensible thing I had heard in a while. If this was Iraq, we could have just carpet bombed the ranch and used a vacuum to suck up what was left for DNA analysis, but this was the United States, where we weren’t supposed to wantonly kill our own citizens. I was guessing heads would roll over today’s shootout, and I was glad. They deserved to.

  “Our equipment on the ridge line is still functioning,” Bolle said. “We can continue to man the observation post”

  Burke nodded. “Do that. The main thing I want your crew to do is just fade into the woodwork. There’s going to be a giant investigation into all this eventually, and you’re going to have to account for the rounds you fired from that ridiculous gun you have, but I can hold that off for a while. Right now everyone just wants the siege over before it turns into some kind of mass suicide or something.”

  We made sure we all had up to date cell phone numbers and Bolle and I slipped out without attracting any more attention.

  Alex was waiting for us by the car when we came out. There was blood on her shirt and she looked tired. She looked at Bolle rather than me.

  “I’ve done all I can do here. We flew the last casualty out a few minutes ago.”

  Bolle surprised me by sitting in the back and letting Alex stretch out up front. We had barely left the city limits when I realized she was asleep with her head against the window. Nobody said a word during the whole drive. I was alone with my own thoughts, Bolle was alone with his.

  I brought the car to a halt outside of the trailer. Bolle got out without a word, leaving me with Alex.

  I shook her awake. She jumped and her arms flailed, not quite punching me in the face. I pulled back and put my hands in front of my face.

  “Hey. It’s me.”

  She was breathing fast, not quite hyperventilating, but close. Her hands clutched the dash and she stared down at her feet.

  “Deep breaths,” I said. “Breathe in for a four count, hold it for a four count, then let it out for a four count.”

  She did it, and I could see her start to calm.

  “Don’t they tell women who are giving birth to do this?” she asked after a while.

  “Yeah. But we have to call it combat breathing when we teach it to cops,” I said.

  I didn’t know if she wanted me to hug her or touch her or what, so I didn’t.

  “I’m tired of this,” she said. “I want my old life back.”

  “Me too,” I said. I wanted it for her and I wanted it for me.

  She slammed her hand on the dash. Once, twice, then a third time. I heard plastic crack the last time.

  “You’re going to break your hand,” I said.

  She was breathing hard again. I opened my mouth to suggest she try the deep breathing again, but she started doing it on her own, so I didn’t say anything.

  “How did you do this for so long?”

  I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it, surprised by the question.

  “People thought it was bad that I had to deal with dead bodies all the time,” she said. “But at least I wasn’t there when they actually got shot or stabbed, and I wasn’t too worried about somebody trying to kill me. You’ve been doing this since you were in the army. How do you do it?”

  “I guess I just don’t think about it too much,” I said. That sounded pretty lame the second it was out of my mouth.

  “I guess that’s my problem. I think too much,” she said and got out of the car. She stalked across the gravel and into the bunkhouse.

  With a sigh, I pulled myself out of the car. I was sore and tired from humping up and down the ridge, on top of everything else that had happened. I was tempted to go after Alex and ask her to get in the car with me so we could just get the hell out of here, but once again my rational mind reminded me that I had to see this through. I let her go, figuring we’d sort it all out later.

  Everyone else was in the trailer, which was crowded and smelled of stale coffee. Bolle shot me an irritated look. Apparently, he’d been waiting for me.

  I grabbed a cup of coffee and listened while he briefed everyone. There was silence all around for a few minutes as everyone digested what had happened.

  “What now?” Eddie asked.

  “We need a lever,” Bolle said. “The first one that comes to mind is the sheriff. It sounds like he has quite the relationship with Marshall and Webb.”

  I nodded my head. It made sense.

  “I bet he’s dirty,” I said. “These guys spoil everything they touch. There’s a local guy I’ve been meaning to get in touch with. He used to work for the Portland Police Bureau before he came out here and went to work for the sheriff’s office. Apparently when the new guy got elected, he fired a bunch of the old deputies and hired his own crew.”

  “I can start digging into him,” Casey said. “Phone records. Social media. That sort of thing.”

  “What if we can’t find anything?” Dalton asked.

  Casey shrugged. “We can plant it. Suspicious financial transactions. Stuff like that. I could even drop kiddie porn on his county work computer, but I really don’t want to deal with stuff like that.”

  “You scare the shit out of me sometimes, girl,” Dale said. Dalton and I were both nodding our heads. Between the three of us Dale, Dalton and I had probably killed enough people to populate a small town, but sometimes I thought Casey was the most dangerous member of our little group.

  I heard a buzz from the desk. Casey grabbed the phone in the plastic bag and held it out to me.

  “CRYPTER,” she said.

  WTF? I almost got killed.

  Not our call,
I typed back. That was the FBI.

  I need an out. Marshall is a lunatic and is going to get us all killed. Get me out of here.

  I looked at Bolle.

  “I want to know who he is,” Bolle said.

  We want your name.

  The phone was quiet for a while, and I was convinced he’d broken it off when a reply finally came.

  You can know who I am when I’m standing in front of you. If I find a way to break out, can you protect me? I’m afraid if the FBI takes me I’ll be disappeared.

  “Tell him if he can make it out of the perimeter, I can guarantee his safety. He’ll be in our custody and not the FBI.”

  I had no idea how we were going to keep that promise, but I typed it out anyway.

  There was another long pause.

  I’m working on a plan. I’ll let you know. CRYPTER out.

  “Who is he?” I said it out loud without meaning to.

  “We don’t even have a good guess,” Bolle said. “That’s what worries me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next day things became truly bizarre.

  With four federal agents dead, and over a dozen more wounded, Mueller County was now on the map. Previously unknown to damn near everybody, it was now the subject of laser like focus of the federal government, the news media, and extremist crackpots from all over the political spectrum.

  Through the night, there were a couple of brief skirmishes and firefights, as the cops struggled to set up a perimeter around the ranch house, and a couple of groups inside tried to escape on foot. Nobody was killed, but it emphasized how difficult it was to secure an area as big as Freedom Ranch. There were a couple hundred cops on the scene now, but even if only half of them were resting at a given time, it was still quite a bit of ground to cover.

  That all changed in the morning. Someone had done a momentous job of cutting through red tape, because not even twenty four hours after the initial shoot out, six US Army Stryker vehicles showed up. They weren’t quite full fledged tanks, but they dwarfed the Lenco Bearcats the FBI had brought along. The eight wheeled behemoths were armored to withstand up to a .50 caliber machine gun, had a variety of sensors that let them see in the dark, and most importantly they were air conditioned.

  The task force set four of them in a circle around the ranch buildings, as sort of mobile bunkers. The other two were held in reserve and used to swap out crews every few hours.

  Overnight, the crazies had descended on Lehigh Valley, and the Strykers didn’t help to calm anyone’s nerves. A bunch of guys on one side of the street were waving upside down American flags and screaming about Posse Commitatus and how taxation was illegal, while on the other side the beads and braids contingent was having a sit in and trying to send everybody calming, non-violent vibes by drumming and chanting. The media, gleefully grateful for a change from the usual political debates, was covering all of it with the rapt attention of a ten-year-old country kid going to the state fair for the first time.

  Over the next few days, we fell into a routine. Robert, Dale and I climbed the ridge at first light, spent a mind numbing day in the heat maintaining over watch on the compound, and climbed down the ridge in the late evening to go back to Rudder’s and repeat the whole thing again. We radioed intelligence back to the FBI command post in Lehigh, which was received with a curt “copy.”

  The siege settled into a routine. The negotiators spent hours on the phone with Marshall, listening to long rants and unrealistic demands. At first, the occupiers were live streaming internet videos from inside the ranch, but the FBI figured out a way to jam local cell phone transmissions. Electricity to the compound was cut off, and a FBI sniper disabled the backup generator. They also shot out the tires on all the vehicles. Several people were caught trying to sneak through the lines with food and supplies.

  The hope was with no air conditioning, and no way to pump water from the well, the occupants would give up quickly. During the first 36 hours, several folks walked out with their hands up. Apparently this whole thing hadn’t turned out to be as much fun as they’d hoped. None of them were Marshall’s people, or Webb’s security staff. They were all folks from various fringe groups that had descended on the ranch after the initial shootout. The FBI debriefed them for intelligence about conditions inside the house, but didn’t share the results with us.

  After a while hope of a quick resolution faded. Webb had fancied himself a survivalist, and the house was stocked with food, and a giant cistern of water. The people left were apparently content to sit in the 100 degree heat and sweat.

  One evening we arrived back at Rudder’s to find Casey waiting for us outside the trailer.

  “I’ve got something you need to see,” she said.

  My hopes of dinner, a shower, and maybe a little time with Alex vanished as she led me in a big arc around one of Rudder’s pastures.

  “What are we doing?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” she said. “Try to act casual.”

  Finally we entered a little stand of woods from the side opposite the ranch house and trailer. I started to ask her why she hadn’t led me there in a straight line when she handed me a pair of binoculars she’d brought with her.

  “See the big dead tree? Look about a third of the way down.”

  I focused the binoculars, hoping she hadn’t led me up here to see a cool birds nest or something. I almost missed the camera attached to the tree because it was painted a dull gray with brown stripes. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who liked to do remote surveillance.

  “It looks like a bump on the tree,” I said. “How the hell did you find it?”

  “It was tricky,” Casey said. “Henry and I were doing a signals sweep when we noticed the transmissions we couldn’t account for. We almost missed it. That gave us a general direction. Then I flew around with Jack, triangulating the signal, but you know, without LOOKING like we were triangulating the signal. That gave me a circle about a hundred yards or so around. Then I hiked up here and started looking at trees.”

  “Do you think they saw you?” I only had a vague understanding of what Henry and Casey had done to find the camera overlooking the ranch, but I knew if whoever was watching us had seen her looking for it, the jig was up.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I crept in the back way. The same way I led you in.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Who does it belong to?”

  If it was the FBI keeping track of us, I wasn’t too worried. But if it was Marshall’s people, that was different. We’d been sweeping the cars for tracking devices and bugs. It had pained me to do it, but we’d even been monitoring Rudder’s phone calls. The old guy didn’t seem to communicate with anyone. He didn’t even own a computer or a cell phone, and there had been no activity on the ranch’s single land line telephone.

  “It’s possible somebody tracked us via the CRYPTER phone.”

  “Which means we aren’t the only ones that know about CRYPTER,” I said.

  “Right.”

  I scratched the stubble of my beard and wished I hadn’t skipped lunch.

  “So I guess the question is, do we take it down, or leave it up,” I said. I had my .308 with me and was tempted to put a 168-grain hollow point through the camera lens just because it irritated me.

  “I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s go back to the ranch and I’ll show everybody at once.”

  She seemed to enjoy piloting the four-wheeler, so I let her drive and hung on for dear life. Of all of us, Casey seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself at times. We managed to make it back to Rudder’s without acquiring any new broken bones. Once we had a chance to shake off the dust, we gathered everyone together in the trailer.

  Casey put her helmet down and started typing on one of the computers.

  “Remember the tracker I put in Hubbard’s car? We’ve been getting good data from it,” she said. She showed us a map on the screen.

  “If I overlay the data from the last few days, it shows me the
car has mostly been sitting still, either at the middle school the feds are using as a command post, or at the motel in town.”

  I looked at the red lines on the map. They mostly followed the route from the motel to the school, like Casey said. But there were a couple trips outside of town. Hubbard looked like he was randomly driving back roads, going around in circles.

  “That’s a surveillance detection route,” I said.

  “Yep,” Casey said. “Out here it’s pretty easy to see if someone is following you. It looks like he’s done a perfunctory SDR a couple of times before going here.”

  She zoomed in on a spot on the map. “After he does his surveillance detection route, he always winds up here.”

  “What’s there?” Bolle asked.

  Casey flipped over to a satellite view.

  “It’s a twelve-acre parcel of land at the end of a dirt road. There’s a manufactured home on it and it’s been in foreclosure for a couple of years due to unpaid property taxes.”

  “A perfect place to hide out,” Bolle said. “What’s he doing out there?”

  “Only one way to find out,” I said.

  “I reckon we’re going on a nature hike,” Dale said.

  A few hours later I found myself hiding in the woods, looking at a familiar pickup. It was the monster truck that had been parked outside the motel where I’d been darted and almost kidnapped. I felt a surprising surge of anger when I saw it. Bolle, Eddie, Dale and I had carefully moved on foot from a road about a mile away, bushwhacking through the woods with the aid of a handheld GPS unit.

  The house was ramshackle, with one window boarded up. It was surrounded by knee-high weeds and there was trash all over the place. A late model SUV was parked next to the truck. We could hear the hum of a generator from behind the house.

  The most interesting thing was the round satellite dish screwed to the roof. A cable ran from the dish and into a window. It was exactly the kind of dish Casey had told us to look out for.

  Bolle gave me a nod and I pulled out the satellite phone.

  Casey answered on the first ring.

  “Do it,” I said.