The assistant desk manager came out and personally swiped her AmEx platinum card—the first he’d seen recently—and signed her in. “Welcome, Ms. Effingham, if there’s anything I or any of the hotel’s staff can personally do to make your stay more pleasant don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Very kind,” the woman said, her voice a little harsh, though somehow charming. “Is the lounge open yet?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do I need a reservation for the restaurant this evening?”
“No, but may I call and have them hold a table for one?”
“For two,” the woman said, and she turned away, glanced at the bellman with her bags on a trolley, and marched across the elegant lobby that had crystal chandeliers hanging from the arched ceilings.
Barry Egan was uncomfortable in the silicone breast prosthesis and the black wig that was warm, but he knew that he looked good by the attention he’d gotten at the airport in Atlanta, and here at the hotel. He’d played around with this sort of stuff a few years ago when he was in high school and wanted to see what would happen if he went into a cowboy bar down in Waco and maybe hustle a few bucks. He’d gotten the shit kicked out of him, but the old lady who ran the bar told him that his only mistake had been his five o’clock shadow. Other than that he was cute—fucked-up, but cute.
He’d shaved four times per day for the past several days, and used a dusky makeup that made him look Mediterranean.
And the other piece of advice the old lady had given him was not to swish. “Makes you look like a goddamned faggot. Just be yourself.”
“I don’t want to walk like John Wayne,” he’d said, and the woman had laughed at him.
“Just ain’t no John Wayne in you, son. Never will be.”
Upstairs Egan refused the bellman’s offer to unpack the bags, but had him get some ice. When he came back he tipped him fifty dollars and sent him away.
He touched up his makeup one more time, took a deep breath, and went back downstairs to the Monarch’s Lounge, patterned more or less after an English pub with dark paneling, cozy little nooks, and a standup bar. It was only a few days before Christmas and the half dozen or so patrons looked odd to Egan, maybe even a little lost, maybe lonely. It was a feeling he had been familiar with most of his life. Christmas to him was little more than another season of regret for a lot of things he’d never had, mostly family.
He spotted Don Mattson waiting in one of the booths, but crossed to the bar first where he ordered a Grey Goose martini, straight up, very cold, two olives—sorta like a modern James Bond, he thought. In a foreign hotel. Staging the next big operation. Covering all the bases.
Mattson looked up when Egan walked over, but he’d showed no signs of recognition, only a mild irritation when Egan sat down across from him.
“Piss off, luv, I’m waiting for someone,” Mattson said. He was forty-seven with the florid complexion of a long-term drinker, a hawkish nose, narrow eyes, and thinning blond hair. He’d worked as a legitimate journalist for fifteen years after J school, including a four-year stint at the L.A. Times London bureau where he’d picked up a few British mannerisms, ending up as a political correspondent in Tallahassee for the Orlando Sentinel before he showed up one too many times drunk and with a too highly inflated expense account request that almost certainly included high-priced call girls and was fired.
He’d worked his way down from daily newspapers to freelance correspondent, finally ending up at the Freedom Socialist newspaper in San Francisco where he saw the light and became a friend of the Posse, who were in his opinion the real friends of the American people, unlike the Tea Party who were merely in it for themselves, whatever that meant.
“Don’t you recognize an old friend when you see him, luv?” Egan asked.
Mattson’s face was all of a sudden a study in contrasts, from fascination and interest because he’d obviously found the woman sitting across from him at least somewhat attractive, then disgust and revulsion because he began to realize that the woman was probably a man—a transvestite—and felt guilty and dirty because of his initial attraction, and finally dumbfounded when he finally recognized who it was.
“Jesus H. Christ.”
A waitress came over and asked for a drink order, but Mattson shook his head and Egan held up his nearly full martini glass.
“Who’d you expect?” Egan asked when she was gone.
“Anything but this.”
Mattson had come to Egan’s attention about three years ago when the Posse had robbed a bank in Waterloo, Iowa, and brought the money—about eight thousand and change—back to a squadron meeting outside of Missoula. It was Mattson who’d been recommended to conduct a nationwide PR push. “The only difference between the Posse and any organization which has the people’s well-being at heart—such as the Boy Scouts—is good press. Get that and everything else falls into place.”
Egan had been the mastermind of the robbery, and although he’d promised a take of one hundred thousand dollars plus, no one had found any fault with his planning or courage. It was just dumb luck that they’d hit the bank the day after a cash call of one hundred fifty thousand had arrived from the fed to cover payroll for a number of businesses, including Ronan and DC Industries, plus Menards and Powers. In this part of the country, cash was sometimes still king.
“Then I surprised you?”
“One hundred percent.”
Egan nodded his satisfaction and he took a delicate hit of his martini. “We have a job to do which depends on us coming across as a couple,” he said. “An in and out, should be done in time to open presents under the tree.”
“Why the getup?”
“Visibility. People see what they want to see, and if they’re looking for strangers they won’t find a tourist couple very threatening.”
Mattson glanced around the barroom. “Another bank, here in Regina?”
“Down in North Dakota, but this time it’s a kidnapping.”
Mattson reared back, visibly disturbed. “Not my style, man. Too much shit can go wrong if we have to hold the mark more than a day or two.”
“Won’t have to hold her.”
“What are you talking about?” Mattson demanded, but then he leaned closer. “Her?”
“A newspaper reporter, and we’re going to kill her before we start our negotiations, because the ransom doesn’t mean a thing.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. This is crazy shit. I’ve told you guys about the power of the press. If they get on your case you’re dog meat.”
“She’s worth more dead than she is alive.”
“I won’t do it. And I mean it. I’ll just leave first thing in the morning and go back to Frisco where I can do the cause a hell of a lot more service than snatching some reporter and snuffing her out. People do hard time for that kind of shit, something I’m definitely not interested in experiencing. Anyway, if you actually pull off something like that and even a whiff connects it with the Posse you’re going to need some serious spin. I can’t do it if I’m in the slammer.”
Egan had never really considered the possibility that anyone could turn him down. He’d never asked for much, but when he asked he expected immediate acceptance. It was a matter of loose ends, he explained to Mattson. Despite all the good work the newsman had done for the Posse he was expendable. If need be he would disappear. Happened all the time. The needs of the whole were far greater than the wishes or even well-being of the one. It was a tough old world.
After a longish beat, Mattson drained his glass and raised it for the waitress to see. She came over and he ordered another Courvosier neat. “Who is the woman?”
“Her name is Ashley Borden and she works for the Bismarck Tribune.”
“Why do we want her? Are her parents somebody?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Egan said. “There’s twenty-five large for you.”
“Seventy-five,” Mattson said without hesitation.
And Egan suppressed a
smile. “Fifty,” he said. He had the man as he knew he would. Mattson had been in financial trouble most of his life, in part because of his drinking, and in part because of a lot of bad decisions—many of which had been brought on by his drinking. It was circular.
The waitress came with the Courvosier. “Tell me everything,” Mattson said, raising the glass to his lips.
“For starts that’s your last drink until the op is completed,” Egan said.
Mattson hesitated for a moment, but then put the glass down. “Fair enough.”
“There’ll be three of us. You and I plus Toby Trela who’s a rodeo cowboy. He’s waiting for us right now at the Badlands Roundup Lodge south of Medora.”
“Never heard of him or the ranch or the town—if that’s what it is.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’ll explain on the way down tonight,” Egan said.
“I thought we were staying here through the holidays?”
“We are. But we’re hanging the ‘do not disturb’ sign on our door. Six hours down, twelve there and six back. We leave at two in the morning, and we’ll be back at two in the morning Thursday.”
24
THE MOTOR HOME had been parked unnoticed about thirty yards inside a narrow box canyon a few miles to the southeast of Amidon for several days, which was an embarrassment for Slope County Sheriff Dereck Richards who owned a ranch nearby.
A couple of elk hunters from Fargo had stumbled across it and as soon as the body of a young man had been discovered near the driver’s position they’d backed off and called 911.
Richards had gone out to take a look and immediately called his old friend Nate Osborne up in Medora because the Billings County Sheriff’s Department had posted an all points for information about a motor home or truck with dual rear wheels that could have been involved in an incident overnight at the ELF facility just north of the Slope County line.
Osborne got out of his SUV and walked over to where Richards, an older, weathered man in his early sixties with snow white hair was leaning against his ten-year-old Ford F150 pickup, about twenty yards behind the expensive-looking Newell, and they shook hands. No one else was out here this afternoon.
“Looks like you’ve got yourself into something interesting,” Richards said. He had an unlit cigar in his mouth. “One body, blood spatter on the driver’s side window. Looks like he was behind the wheel when someone nailed him maybe from the doorway. Right angle.”
“Minneapolis FBI’s coming down from the ELF station. We’ve got maybe a half hour. How do you see it, Dee?”
“Shot to the side of the head, maybe a .45. These guys weren’t elk hunters, leastways this wasn’t done with a Winchester or Weatherby. I ran the plate. It’s a rental from over in Billings under the name Brenda Ackerman, about a month ago, not due back until the day after Christmas. They had money.”
“What else?”
Richards looked at him. “Pisses me off I didn’t find it, I’m up here at least once a week this time of the year.”
“I meant inside.”
“I know what you meant. But I didn’t want to contaminate the scene. Figured the bureau would be interested, and they can be a bit prickly when it comes to crime scenes. Especially out in the sticks. Know what I mean? So I backed off soon as I saw the mess.”
“How old? A day a week a month?”
“Less than a week,” Richards said. “Fits your ELF incident. How’d you figure it?”
“We found a couple of ATVs and a trailer along with some shell casings—six by thirty-fives—and blood spoor and something heavy with dual rear wheels.”
“Military ammunition?”
“Be my guess,” Osborne said.
Richards nodded, and he looked toward the north at the same time Osborne heard the rotor chop of a helicopter incoming.
“Best I stay out of this, think?”
“They’ll want to talk to you, and the guys who made the call.”
Richards took the cigar out of his mouth, looked at it, and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. “You know where to find me,” he said.
He and Osborne shook hands and the Slope County sheriff got back in his pickup and drove off. Like a lot of locals with long family histories out here, Richards simply didn’t want to get too involved with the outside world. Some drunk shooting up a transformer on a power pole, or once in a blue moon some cowboy whacking his wife and then turning the gun on himself, was about as far as he wanted to take it. Billings County was up north, and the FBI was just about from a different planet. And whatever was going on at the ELF facility just across his county line, was from a different universe. If they needed him, Nate knew where to find him.
The chopper was still a half mile out when Osborne put on his latex gloves and entered the motor coach. The copper smell of blood instantly hit the back of his throat. A youngish-looking man—maybe in his late teens early twenties at the most—was lying in a heap just behind the driver’s seat. Blood had spattered on the side window, but most of it had been wiped up, leaving the majority of the mess on the fabric-covered wall.
The kid had been at the wheel when someone shot him in the side of the head, pulled his body out of the driver’s seat, then cleaned up some of the mess, and drove off. Down here. Barry Egan. Apparently not a particularly easy man to work with. So far the body count was seven at the power station and more at the trailers—at least three of which were probably Egan’s work. The woman just outside the station, the blood spoor at the ATV where the motor home had been parked—if the tire prints matched, which he thought they would—and this one.
The helicopter was coming in for a noisy landing as Osborne stepped around the body, avoiding the blood, and slowly made his way to the back of the coach. Lots of money, the thought came to him, but they weren’t elk hunters. Guys like that were out for a good time—cards, booze, supper out of cans, or the freezer, no one cleaning up. Shit lying everywhere. He’d seen it before. But except for the body and the blood, this place was too neat.
And there was another smell that he couldn’t place. He stopped about halfway back and cocked his head. Something warm, something that had been heated up, but not food. And it came to him that it was a smell he remembered from the FORECON days. But it wasn’t from the field. Somewhere at a headquarters position.
He took another step toward the back of the coach. One of the cabinets above the dining table was ajar, and using the tip of a gloved finger he eased it open. The space was filled with electronic equipment, three units a little larger than DVD players stacked one on top of the other. Cables snaked from the rear of the units up toward the ceiling.
The cabinet spaces beneath the seats were filled with other electronic equipment, the purpose of which he couldn’t guess. But he remembered the smell now; it was from a headquarters communications center where he’d been given a mission briefing. Electronic equipment.
It was a possible answer to the disrupted communications and computer systems at the power station. Which made these people something other than amateurs.
The helicopter had touched down outside, and someone was shouting his name. Captain Nettles, he thought.
He continued aft, past the bathroom compartment where he pulled up short. Another body lay on its side, its arms and legs splayed out as if it had been posed, its back a mass of clotted blood. The one from the ATV, he figured, where the coach had been parked south of Donna Marie.
The man was older than the one on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He had a short, scruffy beard, gray like his hair, and he looked as if he had been in a great deal of pain when he’d died.
“Sheriff!” Nettles shouted from just outside the door. He sounded angry.
Something about the body seemed odd to Osborne and he stepped a little closer, avoiding the blood smears from where it had been dragged. The man’s complexion was dark, his nose large and hooked, his eyes hooded; profiling, maybe, but he was just about certain that the man was Middle Eastern—Iraqi, Afghani, maybe Pakastani. Which
raised the question in Osborne’s mind about al-Qaeda forming some sort of an alliance with the Posse Comitatus, and it was not a very pleasant assumption.
He squatted down, his left prosthesis splayed out awkwardly so he could get a better angle on the face. Maybe something was there, something he was missing. He’d built something of a reputation in FORECON as a pretty good poker player. The guys thought he memorized the deck, like a card counter, which meant he had a better handle on the odds. But the plain fact was that he could read faces. He could pretty well tell when someone was nervous or anxious, or excited, or lying. And he’d always been surprised that everyone else didn’t have the same ability. Worked in a poker game, but it was one of Carolyn’s pet peeves; it just wasn’t fair that he could tell when she was telling a lie. A girl had to have some secrets. But he’d always bit off the first thing that came to the tip of the tongue: “If you don’t want to be caught in a lie, don’t tell a lie.”
The Afghani, or whoever he was, wasn’t a terrorist. Osborne had seen the look on some of the really dedicated guys who were willing to give their lives for the cause. This one seemed more like a cleric, maybe a philosopher or a scientist. And he thought about the milky liquid Ashley had seen one of the attackers pour into one of the well-head ports. Whitney—Dr. Lipton—had cordoned off the area, and the material and been pumped out by two of her people who understood biohazards, and it was right now being analyzed. A sample of it had been sent to the CDC in Atlanta, and another—a control sample—had been frozen in liquid nitrogen.
And for no real reason, or maybe a dozen mostly instinctual ones, Osborne was fairly certain that this was the man who’d not only poured the stuff into the wellhead port, but the scientist who’d created it. A biological scientist, which if that were true, meant he and Egan and the team who’d attacked Donna Marie knew a hell of a lot more about the Dakota Initiative than they were supposed to know.
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