by John Cutter
The fifty-man core Brethren had been training for seven years. Thanks to an online recruitment drive, they’d doubled their ranks. It was true they had a good many amateurs among the new men — like Foster and Adler. He’d only taken those two with him today, when he saw the hiker on the security video, to give them a chance to engage in a routine detail. Now and then he had to turn away some hiker or a homeless person looking for a place to hide in the forest. He’d expected no trouble. The General quietly paid off a couple of Forest Service men responsible for this part of the forest, and whatever the Brethren wanted was okay, long as they were careful about fire safety.
But Bellator had been a surprise…
There was something about the man. Something quietly dangerous. Like an IED he’d see exposed on the roadside, back in Iraq. It was just there, a motionless tangle of wires around a plastic explosive packet — waiting to explode.
The minutes passed as Mac Colls fidgeted in the hard chair. He thought about getting that cup of coffee.
But then Gustafson came out of the comm room, his wide, froggish face creased by a frown. He tossed a print-out onto his desk. “Look at that. I was able to obtain a file on Bellator. Our man in the Pentagon gave us what he could. That the man you encountered?”
Colls opened the folder and looked at the computer-printed color photo. “That’s him, sir. That’s the man.”
The General sat at his desk and tented his fingers. “My man had the goods on your troublemaker. Bellator is a Yale grad, Phi Beta Kappa. Multi-athletic. Big in college triathlons. Joined the Army Rangers, took officer’s training, made lieutenant. Fought in Afghanistan. Double handful of medals. Made captain. Then he transferred to Delta Force…”
“Delta Force! Holy shit — sir.”
“Yes. His time in Delta Force is classified and we don’t know what he did for them, except some of it was in Iraq, some in Somalia, and some of it was Syria, and there was one secret mission to Pakistan. There were other missions where no location is given. Then his time’s done, he decides not to re-up. But the feds keep track of him. He hires on with an outfit called Pro-Active Security International. Kind of a Blackwater type situation. That went south and he quit the company. He’s spent the last two years building a big house on that island in the Puget Sound, on property left to him by…” He looked at the file. “One ‘Jack Sullivan’. An associate of his father’s.” General Gustafson shook his head. “This man Bellator is deadly. You boys got off easy! The CIA codename for him was Charon. You know who Charon is, Mac?”
“No sir.”
“In Greek myths, he’s the boatman who takes you to Hell.”
Mac grunted. Vincent Bellator had seemed a normal man — big, yes, but not extraordinary. Not at first. He had short, dark brown hair, a lean square-jawed face weathered by a lot of time spent outdoors. During the whole encounter he’d seemed detached, mildly amused.
But Colls’ mouth went dry as he remembered looking into Bellator’s eyes once Vince got the AR-15 in his hands. Death had been waiting in those chilly gray eyes.
You can live or die, it’s your call. That was the message he’d read there.
Colls shrugged. He wasn’t going to let the son of a bitch intimidate him. “Sir — we can still kill him. He doesn’t have to see it coming.”
“Kill him? Not unless we have to! Mac, I don’t want to kill Vincent Bellator. I want to recruit him!”
CHAPTER TWO
Katydids called stridently through the velvety night as Vince finished his hike in a fading Indian Summer warmth, passing through a grove of pine trees to Dead Springs. Approaching the clearing at the base of a low hill, he wasn’t surprised to see Chris’s mother, Rose Destry, sitting on the porch of the old cabin. She was hunched on the deck of the roofed front porch, her feet on the ground, in a pool of light from the lantern hanging overhead. They’d never met, but they’d talked on the phone, and he had seen pictures of her that Chris had shown to him.
They’d arranged to meet today — but he was a little disconcerted to find her here already. He was going to be burying one of Chris’s body parts here. How was his mother going to feel about that? He was self-conscious about the AR-15 he carried on a strap over his right shoulder, too.
“Rose!” he said, stepping out into the thin moonlight. She sat up and squinted his way. “It’s Vince Bellator.”
“Vincent!” She stood up, smiling. “Come on to the cabin!”
He walked by the Dodge Ram extended-cab pickup parked to his right and joined her in the lantern light.
They looked each other over. She was a short, plump woman in blue jeans and a black and gray plaid shirt, untucked. Her long copper-colored hair, streaked with gray, hung behind her in double braids. There were old smile lines on her round face that were creasing toward sadness now. Her blue eyes had sparkled in photos; now they seemed flat with pain. She glanced at the AR-15 and he could see her decide not to ask about it yet.
She smiled ruefully at Vince. “I had no idea you were so… How tall are you?”
“Six-five.”
“Lord, I thought my Chris was tall…” Her lips buckled and she turned away. “Come on. Have a drink and tell me all about it…”
She led the way into the cabin. It was three rooms, one story, rough-cut lacquered pine with interlocking corners. Judging by wear and tear, Vince guessed it had been built in the 1960s. Two battery-powered lanterns hung in the main room and a small wood fire burned in the stone hearth. A dusty elkhorn rack was poised over the fireplace. There was an old settee, one leg replaced by a chunk of firewood, across from a sofa, with a deeply worn hook rug between.
“Take the sofa, good for the big guys,” she said, going to a little portable liquor cabinet that stood on wheels against the log wall.
Vince took off his pack, leaned it with the rifle against the wall, and sat back on the old faded-red sofa, feeling awkward. He glanced at the backpack and thought about what was in it. She didn’t know about that.
“How about a whiskey and soda, Vincent? Got some Jameson here.”
“That’ll be fine.”
“There’s no electricity but I still have some ice that hasn’t melted… Got a bag from the Quickie store down the road…” Her voice quavered a little. She seemed to be talking just to keep from crying. “The water’s on, though; we have a tank-full. Not that much, but you can take a shower, get some cooking water, use the toilet. There’s a septic tank. I put some food in the cooler — it’s in the bedroom. Place doesn’t have a kitchen to speak of, just a shed attached to the back with a sink. But you’ll find a propane camp stove out there, pans, dishes, a coffee pot… and two pounds of coffee.”
“It’s… good of you to let me stay here for a few days,” he said. “Chris always said we’d come out here and…” He winced. Probably not the right time to bring up what Chris would never again do. “…and do some fishing.”
She brought him the drink, a tumbler with crushed ice, whiskey, a splash of soda, then sank down on the settee. She took a sip from her tumbler and said, “You can still do that, on your own. Fishing’s at Chickasaw Creek, down the trail southwest. Dead Springs creek here, when it’s running, empties into it. The spring runs when it’s been raining, mostly… Supposedly called Dead Springs because most every time the hunters came here for a drink it was dry… There’s been a couple days’ rain, so it’s got some ditchwater in it…
They were silent for a minute. It seemed much longer than a minute. She gazed at the fire.
Vince could see unshed tears glistening in her eyes. She’d asked to meet him in person because he’d been with Chris when he’d died. “Rose — you still want to know how it happened? What happened to Chris? I mean — in more detail than ‘a missile impact’?”
She looked at him. Firelight played on the left side of her face in the semi-lit room. “Yes. Please.”
He nodded. He’d been hoping to spare her the hard fact that Chris had not died instantly. “We were in the Yucatan, in
the jungle, that much you know. Just about twenty clicks from the border with Guatemala.”
“What was that company called? He told me, and I even wrote to them once, but I seem to be blocking it…”
“Pro-Active Security International. PASI.”
Rose shook her head sadly. “Not even the US military. To die working for people like that…”
Vince nodded. “I know what you mean. I’ll just say — we were genuinely fighting bad guys. Enemies of America. The drug cartels. We had some connections to the DEA and Mexican State Security. We were subcontractors but…” He didn’t want to go into it any farther. The campaign against the Yucatan cocaine and meth manufacturing centers had seemed to make sense to him. But it went sideways. Chris died because of PASI admin’s sloppy intel and bad decisions. Then Vince heard about Tac Two’s mission. Innocent people were killed. An entire family. Because PASI didn’t care about the non-combatants. When Vince found out, he resigned from PASI. The PASI CFO said he was in violation of contract and refused to pay him the second 100k they owed him. But Vince didn’t care. The job had already gone sour for him when Chris was killed. Now they were letting their men cut down innocent bystanders. He didn’t want another cent from them.
Chris Destry and he were tight. Chris was a buddy who’d fought at Vince’s side for three years in northern Afghanistan and two years in Delta Force.
He took a deep breath and went on. “We were about a quarter klick south of the factory and they must’ve gotten some sense of our heli insert — they sent out a drone to locate us. We spotted the drone watching us and I told PASI on the sat-link that we were burned, we should cancel the action. They insisted that the factory had no strong defenses and we had to go on. I was only in nominal command — mercenaries aren’t bound by military law — so I asked the other men what they wanted to do. Every man wanted to go in, including Chris. There would be a big bonus if we took this dope factory down. So… I split the men into two teams, sent them at the factory in a double flank… but then the gunship came. They had their own second-hand Blackhawk — something we had no intel on. It was equipped with Air-to-Surface Missiles. We took cover but you don’t get much shelter from missiles behind a tree. They let loose with four Tomahawks. I had an RPG-7 — a shoulder-fired missile. We were going to use it on their comm center. I used it on the Blackhawk and it went down. I went to find Chris — he was most the way gone when I found him, about twenty-five meters off. He hadn’t taken a direct hit but… he caught splash damage, lost his right hand and…” Vince cleared his throat. Suddenly his voice was getting hoarse. “…and, uh… received serious internal injuries from shrapnel. I got some morphine into him. We had about a minute to talk. I held him in my arms. Chis knew he was going. He didn’t seem scared. He asked me to come here, to this cabin, do something for him… I said I would… Told me how to find it, asked me to tell you what happened, then he…” He swallowed hard. “Then he passed, Rose.”
She hunched over, silently weeping, biting her lower lip, her eyes squeezed shut. Her drink slopped over, some splashing on the floor, the glass still clenched in her trembling hand.
Acting on instinct, Vince put his drink down and went to sit by Rose, his arm around her shoulders. He let her cry.
After a few minutes she sat up and took a long, ragged breath. She pulled a kerchief from her shirt pocket and wiped her eyes, then reached up and squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Vincent. You go on and… drink your drink. I’m okay.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Vince got up, having to clear his throat again, and returned to the sofa. He took a pull on the whiskey and soda. He didn’t usually drink hard liquor but it went down well right then. “I guess you know how I felt about Chris — I told you in the email. But… I wasn’t making a speech, Rose. I meant it. I’ve never served with a better man. He saved my life in Afghanistan. And he was… he was decent. The local people always liked him. When we were in Syria with Delta Force — he practically adopted a whole family. They were running on foot when the Syrian Army was coming in… He got them food and medicine and transportation. Talked a major into it, face to face. Risked his career to do that.”
She nodded. “That was very Chris.”
“Yes. That was Chris all the way.”
“Where you from, Vincent? Chris must’ve told me, but I haven’t slept much lately.”
“Texas, ma’am. Out west of Amarillo.”
“Chris said your dad was a military man too…”
“Two tours in Vietnam. Some… freelance work. Saved up his money and bought a farm. Him and Mama started a flower farm. For florists. That… and goats. They made it all work together.”
“Flowers and goats? When you said Texas, I was expecting a cattle ranch.”
He noticed her looking at the AR-15. “I guess you’re wondering about me toting the semi-auto rifle out here…”
“I’ve seen people in this part of the country use them to hunt.”
He shook his head. “I don’t hunt unless I’ve got no other way to get something to eat. I took it off some knuckleheads in the Talladega. They tried to roust me.”
“You… took it?”
He shrugged. “They were careless. Yeah. They’re fine. I just disarmed them. Guys in paramilitary togs. Looked like militia. You know ’em?”
She snorted. “You had it right — knuckleheads. Dangerous ones. Germanic Brethren, they call themselves.” She took a long pull at her drink. “You know I’ve got... had… two sons, right?”
“Sure. There’s Bobby, Chris’s younger brother. I saw some pictures. How’s he doing?”
Rose looked into the fire and shook her head. “I really don’t know. He’s… It’s funny you running into the Brethren. He got tangled up with those people. Believed a lot of lies they put on the internet and started hanging out with some men from the Wolf Base and… then he heard they were planning some kind of attack. Right here in the USA. He started doubting them. Realized they were lying when they… well, all the claims they made.” Her eyes were still closed. “And he didn’t want any part of it. Said he was going to resign from it. I told him not to go there again, even for that. But he insisted. He has a friend there he wanted to talk to.” She shook her head. “I haven’t heard from him since.”
She pressed her lips together and stood up, went to refill her drink. “I swear I’m not going to cry again. And I’m not.”
He heard the clink and swish of the drink being made, and then she returned to the settee as Vince asked, “How long’s it been since you heard from Bobby?”
“Six weeks. He’s not answering his phone. Doesn’t respond to texts. None of his friends have heard from him.”
“Did you talk to the police?”
“They just shrugged it off. Said he was an adult and probably went off on his own.”
“Could be he went dark because he was afraid of the militia. Didn’t want you to be involved.”
“Not like him to…” She took a drink, shuddered, and went on. “…to not be in touch at all. I’m so scared they’ve… done something to him. I was so shocked when he got involved with them. We didn’t raise our kids to be racists, Vincent. But see — well, you know his dad was a cop, right?”
“Chris told me his dad was a sheriff’s deputy.”
She nodded. “There are a lot of crazy, heavily armed people up in the southern Appalachians. Since the meth started spreading, and the oxy, they’ve gotten crazier, more dangerous. Roy was shot at three times in five years. Then he was hit, badly wounded. But Roy survived and went back to work. Then…” She gave a dry chuckle. “…three years later — lung cancer. Bullets couldn’t kill him — but cigarettes did!”
“Chris mentioned that…”
“After Roy died, Bobby kind of lost his way. He’d been talking about going to a police academy, becoming a deputy like his dad. Only he had some problems. Pot smoking, drinking, a DUI. Then he got into oxycontin. Claimed he was going to clean up his act. Then Roy died and Chris wa
s killed… They died within a year of one another!”
Vince grimaced. “Hard to process all that. The white nationalists have been stepping up their online recruitment of young men — they look for guys who are kind of lost, and angry. Looking for someone to blame.”
She gave him a vigorous nod. “That’s just what happened! Anyway, I lost touch with him for five months while he was with that man Gustafson — that’s their deep-pockets, their so-called visionary. Their little Hitler, really. Bobby said he was getting special training that would ‘save America’. Then he came over here one day and…” She shrugged. “…he said he was done. Said they were planning something. That a lot of innocent people would die. He wanted no part of it. He packed a bag, got on his motorcycle, went to the base one last time. That’s the last I heard of him.”
“You tell the feds about this… attack?”
“I thought about it for a whole week. Finally decided I had to tell them. So I told the FBI. An agent drove all the way up to the house and talked to me. I didn’t know any details. Just what I told you. He wanted me to keep it all quiet, said they were aware of the Brethren and would see what they could find out. That was months ago…”
Vince sipped a little of his whiskey and said, “The feds are more careful now. After the Waco thing.”
“Apparently these domestic terrorist cells are always making some ugly plan and usually nothing comes of it. That’s what Agent Chang said. So maybe the FBI’s not taking it all that seriously. But meanwhile — where’s Bobby?”
“Yeah. It’s… You’re probably on tenterhooks all the time.”
“I am.” She drank a little more, then put the glass on the floor. “I have to drive home; I’d better skip the rest of that drink. Vincent, what was it that Chris asked you to do for him?”