Man Undercover

by Alana Matthews

  The voice on the line was just loud enough to be heard, but Matt couldn’t quite make out the words. Then Carl said, “No, you can turn around—we’ve got wheels now. We took on some heat and had to bail. We’ll meet you at the compound.”

  He listened for a moment, then nodded and slapped the cell phone shut. “They’ll be waiting for us. Let’s go.”

  Matt glanced at Rusty in the rearview mirror and Rusty nodded. Putting the SUV in reverse, he backed out of the cave and got them on the road again, heading north.

  They wound through the mountains, following a circuitous route that Rusty laid out, turn by turn, until they were deep into a forest of redwoods.

  As they came to the top of a small rise, Rusty said, “Stop here.”

  Matt touched the brake, brought the SUV to a halt. There were trees lining both sides of the road, so thick that they nearly blocked out the late-afternoon sun. This was the proverbial middle of nowhere, and Matt could tell by the look on Tara’s face that she was as bewildered by Rusty’s command as he was.

  Glancing in the mirror again, he saw Carl dialing the cell phone. A moment later, Carl said, “Let us in,” and, within seconds, Matt saw movement ahead, toward the bottom of the rise.

  A man on horseback suddenly appeared on the road, gesturing to them with the rifle in his right hand. On his left was a large pile of timber, thick fallen tree branches piled just off the road.

  As Matt pushed the SUV forward, the branches began to tremble and move, and it soon became clear that they were attached to an electronic gate that guarded a narrow dirt road. It was a clever ruse, and with the gate closed, no one driving along here would even know that road existed.

  The man on horseback gestured again, and Matt pulled onto the dirt road. As the SUV bumped along it, the gate closed behind them and he and Tara exchanged a quick, surreptitious glance.

  Matt knew that Carl had been right.

  There was no turning back now.

  Chapter Four

  When she was eight years old, Tara got lost in the woods.

  They’d gone on a trip to California to see Dad’s sister Patty, who had a lakeside cabin up at Big Bear. An hour after settling in, she and Susan and Aunt Patty went for a stroll and Tara got separated from them.

  She spent the next two hours wandering in the woods, terrified, certain that at any moment she would be eaten by one of the hairy monsters she’d seen on Thriller Chiller Theater.

  At one point she found a narrow dirt road and decided to follow it, only to discover that it dead-ended. At the very end was a group of dark, dilapidated trailers that she was sure held something far worse than a hairy monster.

  Human monsters, she had thought at the time, not knowing where this had come from. Something her father had once said, no doubt. He had, after all, dealt with such beasts most of his adult life.

  Now, as she sat next to Matt, her SUV bumping along another dirt road, Tara was reminded of that time and wondered what waited for them up ahead.

  More human monsters?

  If Carl was any indication, then the answer was yes. But Rusty didn’t seem too bad. He seemed more like a wounded commanding officer, in pain but stoic, not wanting to show any weakness to the troops.

  Of course, that didn’t mean much. Maybe when he was firing on all cylinders, he was just as maladjusted as his buddy Carl.

  None of these thoughts did much to calm the beating of Tara’s heart or the knot of butterflies in her stomach. She once again felt like that terrified eight-year-old, wondering when or if this ordeal would ever be done.

  It had ended happily then.

  Would it this time?

  Matt spun the wheel slightly, taking them around the bend in the road until they came to a wide clearing that sat under an umbrella of tall trees. The sky was barely visible above them, a series of canopies with a camouflage pattern slung from tree to tree as if to protect the area from falling rain. Or prying eyes.

  Over a dozen vehicles were parked in the clearing. SUVs, pickups, a couple of motorcycles, an old van. To the right, a large container truck marked RGB CONSTRUCTION sat with its rear gates open to reveal pallets of cement sacks and large bundles of rebar, the flexible steel rods used to reinforce concrete.

  Beyond this was a cluster of squat gray buildings, a corral full of horses to the right and a lone horse hitched to a tree on the left. The animals stirred and huffed noisily as Matt followed Rusty’s instructions and pulled up next to a black Humvee.

  The compound was an incongruous mix of the past and the present, and all Tara could think was paramilitary.

  The moment Matt cut the engine, Carl and Rusty opened their doors and climbed out.

  Up ahead, a voice boomed from one of the buildings—“Welcome home, boys!”—and a large man with a crew cut, who looked like an older Rusty, emerged from the doorway, a tight smile on his face, a hand held up in a wave.

  There were fingers missing from that hand, and the ones remaining looked bedraggled and burn-scarred.

  Tara had once produced a story for the Morning News about a longtime bomb maker who was now working as an explosives consultant for the local ATF. He’d also had hands like that.

  “A hazard of the profession,” he’d said.

  Crew Cut was moving to the front of Tara’s SUV now, shaking Carl’s hand and pulling Rusty into a bear hug.

  “I heard a helicopter swing by this way and was starting to wonder if I’d ever see you boys again.” He pulled away from Rusty and looked down at the bloody towel pressed to the younger man’s thigh. “Looks like you’ve got a bit of an annoyance there.”

  Rusty shook his head. “The annoyance is facedown in a ditch,” he said, and the two men laughed, Carl joining in at the last moment.

  During this distraction, Matt reached over and squeezed Tara’s hand. No stutter of electricity this time, no compartmentalizing—the fear she felt was simply too overwhelming to allow for anything else.

  “Stay put,” he whispered. “In a couple minutes I’m going to get a little rough with you, so just play along, make it convincing.”

  How could she do anything but?

  Tara squeezed back and Matt released her hand, throwing his door open and climbing out. Then the man with the crew cut turned, assessing him carefully.

  “You must be Nick,” he said, extending his mangled hand. “Rusty’s been singing your praises for months now. I’m Jimmy Zane, Rusty’s brother.”

  Matt nodded and shook the hand, but before he could say anything, Zane’s gaze shifted to the SUV, his eyes narrowing at the sight of Tara.

  “What do we have here?”

  “She’s a reporter,” Carl told him. “Showed up at the cabin after we broke in, so I figured the best thing to do was keep her close in case the cops managed to corner us. A little negotiating tool.”

  Rusty shot Carl an annoyed look. “Actually, that was Nick’s idea. And a good one, too.” He patted Matt’s back. “Always thinking, this one.”

  Matt nodded again, then started around the front of the SUV to Tara’s door. “And what I’m thinking right now is that we don’t really need her anymore.” He threw the door open, then grabbed her by the collar and yanked her out of the car.

  Tara didn’t have to do much acting. Matt was being as gentle as possible, but a certain amount of force was needed to make this look real.

  She yelped and tried to pull away from him, but he pulled right back. “Why don’t I take her into the woods and bury her?”

  The words weren’t comforting, but Tara knew this was merely a ruse, an impromptu attempt to give her a chance to escape.

  “I’d like a piece of that action,” Carl said. “She still owes me some alone—”

  Zane cut him off with a gesture. “Nobody’s burying anyone until I’ve had some time to think about this. So let’s go inside, take care of Rusty’s leg and get you boys up to speed.”

  Tara’s heart sank, and she and Matt exchanged another quick look.

  The
n Zane headed back through the doorway, a man who was used to giving orders and having them obeyed without comment. If Rusty was a commanding officer, Zane was the general, and Tara’s sense that The Brotherhood was a tightly structured paramilitary operation had just been confirmed.

  Still playing his role, Matt shoved her toward the doorway and they followed Carl and Rusty inside.

  A WOMAN NAMED ROSA patched Rusty up.

  He lay on a cot in the corner of the room as she cleaned his wound and bandaged his thigh. Shoulders hunched, she rarely made eye contact with him, or with any of the other men who populated the room—many of whom also sported crew cuts and combat fatigues. There was a quiet sadness about Rosa and Tara wondered if she was here of her own free will.

  Tara, too, was avoiding eye contact. Especially with Carl, who kept looking her up and down as if he were imagining that she’d just stepped out of the shower.

  Bile rose in the back of her throat at the thought of this, and it took everything she had to keep from throwing up.

  Most of The Brotherhood’s compound was underground, an elaborate bunker with a maze of hallways that seemed to go on forever. The room they occupied was laid out like some kind of command post, a row of electronic gear along one wall, a large-screen TV, several chairs and a wide table that held rolls of blueprints, one of which was stretched out in front of Zane as he spoke to Matt and the others.

  The TV’s audio was off, but the screen was filled with a news report about the intensive manhunt for three escaped convicts, featuring mug shots of Matt and Carl and Rusty. The station was KWEST, Tara’s employer. If they had any idea that her Friday afternoon getaway would turn into this, they would have sent a camera crew along with her.

  It was funny, Tara thought, how being part of a story can change your perspective about news and news reporting.

  Just a few days ago, her biggest concern had been securing interviews for tomorrow’s dedication ceremony at the new Performing Arts Center. As the week wore on, all she had wanted was a night alone at the cabin. A chance to work through some of her grief over the death of her estranged father.

  What a difference a couple hours could make.

  With all this gear, Tara thought, Zane needed a lot of juice to power this place. She hadn’t heard any generators or noticed any solar panels, but then her observational skills had been a bit compromised by the terror vibrating in her bones. Terror that continued to grow as Zane laid out The Brotherhood’s plan.

  “The days of McVeigh and Nichols are long gone,” he said. “They got the job done, but they were primitives, with primitive ideas and outdated technology. We won’t be parking any rented trucks full of ammonium nitrate in front of the target.”

  As much as Tara hated being here, as much as she wanted to bolt for the door and flee—assuming she could find her way out of the maze—she couldn’t help but admire Matt for what he was doing. For putting his own life at risk to keep others from losing theirs.

  But then she remembered that, like her father, Matt was a cop. She couldn’t stop herself from wondering if there were any little girls waiting anxiously by the door for daddy to come home. Maybe he had a wife waiting, too.

  “The plan’s been in motion for weeks,” Zane said, then pointed the gnarled stub of a finger toward the blueprint in front of him. “While you boys were killing time pumping iron in the prison yard, we were busy placing explosives near all the support columns in the basement and a handful of sweet spots throughout the building.”

  Matt nodded. “A controlled demolition.”

  “That’s right. And we’re the ones in control. You have a government that won’t listen to the needs of the common man, you gotta send ’em a message. You make it big. You make it loud. You make it deadly. That’s the only thing that’ll get their attention.”

  Tara listened as Zane launched into a semi-hysterical screed about the New World Order and the global descent into fascism. It had never ceased to amaze her how men like him could wrap their desire for mayhem and destruction in the American flag, when they were simply disgruntled little boys who like to blow things up, their ideals as hollow as their heads.

  As Zane spoke, the others cheered him on, clapping and hooting after every second sentence of a speech that was nothing more than a variation of a dozen other such speeches Tara had heard over the years. She had no doubt that you could find the boilerplate version on the Internet. Whackjobs-R-Us.com.

  It horrified her, however, to see that these particular little boys were so well organized and determined to succeed.

  “We hold the power,” Zane said, and suddenly the room was filled with chanting voices.

  “We hold the power! We hold the power! We hold the power! We hold the power!”

  As a chill worked its way up Tara’s spine, she watched Matt chant along with them, wondering what was running through his mind.

  Zane raised his hands to silence them and said, “We strike tomorrow, men. At 0900 hours.”

  “But where?” Matt asked. “I’m looking at this floor plan, but I still don’t know what building it is.”

  A slow smile spread across Zane’s face. “We’re taking our cue from our predecessors and stabbing ’em right in the heart.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “What you’re looking at, soldier, is the Whitestone federal courthouse. And by nine-oh-five tomorrow morning, all that’ll be left of it is a stinking pile of government franchised rubble.”

  The room erupted in chant again, everyone shouting, “We hold the power! We hold the power! We hold the power! We hold the power!”

  And as several more chills rolled up Tara’s spine, Zane once again cut them off with a gesture and pointed to Rusty in the corner.

  “How’s that leg, little brother?”

  “Better than it looks,” Rusty said. “The bullet went through clean, didn’t do much damage.”

  “Good,” Zane told him. “I need you over here for this.”

  Rusty frowned, then pushed Rosa aside and got unsteadily to his feet. “What’s up?” he asked as he shuffled over to join them.

  “Seems we’ve had a breach of security,” Zane said. “And I’m afraid I’m gonna have to hold you responsible.”

  Rusty’s eyebrows went up. “Me? What are you talking about?”

  “My man on the inside tells me that we have an intruder in our midst.” The room was suddenly silent as Zane looked directly at Matt. “Isn’t that right, Nick?”

  Matt said nothing, but Tara thought she saw his shoulders tense, the muscles tightening beneath his denim shirt.

  Something froze inside her stomach.

  Zane knew about Matt.

  “Turns out your new buddy isn’t what he pretends to be,” Zane told Rusty. “My man tells me he’s Famous But Incompetent.”

  Carl stepped forward now, staring at Matt with contempt. “You saying this punk is FBI?”

  Zane’s eyes hardened. “That’s right,” he said.

  Before another word could be spoken, Matt uncoiled and began to strike.

  Chapter Five

  When Matt sprang into action, all he could think about was Tara. He had to get her out of here.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Run! Run!”

  But Tara was barely on her feet when one of Zane’s men grabbed her by back of the neck, causing her to yelp in pain.

  Determined not to see her hurt, Matt lunged at the man, ripping him away from her and knocking him aside.

  Just as suddenly he was surrounded by bodies, men shouting, hands reaching for him, fists pummeling, and he went down to the floor hard, steel-toed boots now kicking him in the ribs, each blow sending a jolt through his frame that resonated deep in the marrow.

  In the middle of it all he heard Tara screaming, “Stop! Stop it!” Then a blow landed on his head and he went away for a moment, only to return when Zane shouted, “Enough!”

  It stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

  Lying in a ball on the floor, his body on fir
e, his breathing labored, Matt looked up to see that Tara was still in one piece, a trace of tears in her eyes. Another one of Zane’s men had her by the arms and she was struggling against him.

  “Let her go,” Matt said between breaths. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”

  Zane walked over and stood in front of him. “Collateral damage, I’m afraid. Something I understand you’re pretty familiar with.”

  Surprised, Matt stared up at him.

  How could he know about that?

  Then again, how did he know that Matt was FBI? It was obvious that someone on Matt’s team had sold him out—and there were only two possibilities.

  Zane gestured and a couple of his men grabbed Matt by the armpits, yanking him to his feet. He kept his jaw taut, refusing to give Zane the satisfaction of knowing he was in pain.

  Looking past Zane, he saw tears streaking down Tara’s face and wanted to tell her he was sorry, to ask her for forgiveness for failing her. He tried to communicate this with his eyes, but as she stared back at him, she simply looked frightened out of her wits.

  “Let her go,” he tried again, struggling to keep the desperation out of his voice.

  “I don’t think so,” Zane countered. “You’re about to get that trip into the woods you wanted. Only we’ll be burying two bodies instead of one.”

  Carl stepped forward. “Like I said before, I wouldn’t mind a piece of that action.”

  Zane swiveled his head toward him. “You think you deserve some kind of reward for bringing this traitor into our home?”

  Carl faltered. “How was I supposed to know he’s a fed?”

  “Go sit your butt down,” Zane said. “I’ll deal with you in due course.” And as Carl slinked away, Zane returned his gaze to Matt. “I fought for this country in two wars. Fought side by side with some of the men in this room. And we all took our share of bullets for Uncle Sam, only to come back home and find a place we barely recognized. Now you probably think you’re some kind of patriot, some kind of hero, coming in here pretending to be one of us. But under the flag I salute, you’re just a scum-sucking Judas who doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air we do.” He spat on the floor. “Get him out of my sight.”