Judas Horse ag-3

by April Smith

  “What is it?”

  “Flood control.”

  We stand there like two idiots, staring in silence at the work of some engineering drone twenty years ago.

  “Nice,” I say.

  “Thought you’d like it.”

  “Give me dried hoofprints and the smell of old manure any day.” McCord laughs. At least he has a sense of humor about himself. I can feel the giggles rise like bubbles…. Maybe that’s how it will begin.

  “One thing about wranglers,” he says. “We take you to the best places.” “Really? I thought you were interested in Sara.”

  “Sara’s hot but way too young.”

  “That’s what she said about you. The opposite. In reverse.” I snicker self-consciously. Awkward, too, he kicks at the wire cage covering the pump. It moves. It is not secured by the rusted lock, only looks that way.

  Wordlessly, we catch our fingers in the wire mesh and pull. It comes off easily and we set it aside.

  “Someone’s been messing with this, for sure.”

  We squat closer. The flashlight reveals a hole in the iron plate that is fitted around the pipe assembly. A hole for lifting.

  McCord checks with me. “Are you ready?”

  “Go for it.”

  He hooks a finger in the hole, but it is hard to lift. No hinge — it just sits in the square opening.

  “Need a crowbar. Got one in the truck.”

  “I’m not staying here alone.”

  “No problem.” McCord finds a heavy stick. “I’ll lift, you get the stick under there and pry.” “Ready.”

  “Wait a minute!”

  “What?” I whisper with alarm.

  “Watch out for that Indian ghost,” he hisses. “If he comes charging out of here, I’m gone.” “Don’t make me laugh!”

  “This is serious stuff. Indian lore. Buried treasure.” “Just lift.”

  “You know the old Indian chant—”

  “Just do it before I pee my pants!” McCord hooks his finger firmly, sets his back, and lifts. I push the stick underneath the edge and we slide the plate to one side of the hole and shine the light inside.

  I scream like a madwoman. “Close it! Close it quick!” Inside the culvert, four feet down, is a nest of rattlesnakes.

  “Just stand still.”

  “Oh my God, Sterling—”

  “Don’t move. They’re cold. They’re resting. This is not their time of day.” Resting? The slow, slithering mass is pit-of-the-stomach hell. McCord keeps his flashlight on the entwined bodies — big ones, inches thick, with long rattles and darting wedgelike heads.

  “These guys are old,” McCord observes, “and full of venom. If one of these daddies bit that little horse, it’s amazing that he lived.” “They’re waking up—”

  Like the Indian curse.

  Their eyes glint. The rattling, faint at first, is quickly becoming deafening, like medicine men hallucinating wild dreams.

  “Put the cover on,” I plead.

  McCord whistles and bends closer. I grab his belt, terrified he’s going to fall in.

  “Look at this!”

  I cannot look any longer at the glistening knot of reptiles.

  “What is it? Is it the turquoise?”

  “I don’t see no turquoise,” McCord drawls, “but there’s a hell of a lot of guns.” Now I do look, and carefully. The rattlesnakes are crawling over a pile of semi-automatic weapons and boxes of grenades.

  McCord ticks them off: “You got your Heckler & Koch MP5s, a Berreta Model 12, a couple of Ingrams, and your basic Makarov handguns, extremely popular in the Arab world. It’s a global terrorist barn dance down there.” And a.50-caliber McMillan M87, heavy sniping rifle, made in the USA.

  Just like the rifle that killed Sergeant Mackee.

  Careful. What would Darcy say?

  “All this stuff is worth money.”

  McCord shoots me a look too quick to read in the dark. “Seen enough?” “Wait!”

  Scattered across the cache of firearms, like offerings in a tomb, are the skeletons of tiny animals.

  “What are those?”

  “Looks like rabbit bones,” says McCord.

  “The baby rabbits,” I whisper. “Stolen from the farm. Do you think someone’s been feeding them to the snakes?” “They sure didn’t hippity-hop down there on their own,” says McCord.

  We drag the lid over the seething pit.

  Thirty

  Some very unlucky FBI agents (I hope it was the dopey duo from Portland who brought the ducks) dig through the rattlesnakes guarding the cache and replace the.50-caliber M87 sniper rifle with an identical model, sealing everything back the way it was. Forensics determines the gun found in the pit is, in fact, the same one that fired the round that killed Sergeant Mackee. Dick Stone’s fingerprints are all over it.

  As a result, a horrendous argument breaks out in the conference room in Los Angeles.

  “We have the cop killer,” Galloway says right away. “Case closed.” “Dick Stone is more than a killer.” Angelo has loosened the Rolex and is spinning it around his wrist. “He’s an anarchist who hates the FBI.” Donnato: “That’s why we bust him and get Ana out.”

  “What are we in there for?” Angelo yells. “FAN!” “Stone is moments away from making her. If he hasn’t already.” Angelo: “We don’t want to blow the operation on a lousy murder charge.” Donnato gets up from the table to confront him. “Killing an officer gets Stone the death penalty.” Angelo shrugs. “Stone being dead is not the mission.”

  “What is the mission? Remind us.”

  “Stone giving up his contacts.”

  “He’ll talk when he’s in prison.”

  “A former FBI guy? How does that work?”

  “He gets protective custody.”

  “Peter Abbott wants the big picture,” Angelo says impatiently.

  “Peter Abbott sits at a desk in Washington while Ana Grey is at risk. He’s exactly the guy we should be worried about.” Donnato is incredulous. “Whose side are you on?” “You’re asking me that? You are really asking me that? Think twice about walking to your car alone, buddy.” Donnato: “Is that a threat?”

  “I see we are taking our testosterone pills this morning,” says Galloway by way of warning.

  They back off, but only to regroup.

  “Anybody remember a case in the seventies called Turquoise? Ana flagged it from a conversation with Rosalind, who subsequently provided me with confirmation and pulled the abstract. We connected the Weathermen to a string of armored car robberies taking place in Arizona. Dick Stone went in as the undercover. Ana says there’s talk of some kind of buried turquoise up in Oregon. She’s wondering if there’s a connection with Stone and the old Turquoise case.” “In reality?” Angelo says. “Or in his head?”

  Galloway: “Pull up the complete files and court transcripts.” He mouths the dead cigar. “Let’s review. Angelo’s feeling is that whatever is taking place in the here and now, Dick Stone isn’t pulling this off alone. The cache of weapons indicates international connections. He’s up there on the food chain but answering to a higher power.” “The higher power is someone in the Bureau,” Donnato says, barely keeping a lid on it. “Given the Toby Himes revelation, we’d better look closely at who’s in charge and why.” They don’t tell me until later, but as a result of running his license plate at the midsummer festival, Toby Himes has become a “person of interest” to Operation Wildcat. More, the star quarterback. He lives in Stevenson, a tiny river town on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge, where he is employed as the town engineer. If he had come from there the night of the midsummer festival, it would have been almost a three-hour drive to see Mr. Terminate at Dick Stone’s farm. The black man and the biker didn’t meet to discuss hazelnuts.

  Even more compelling: Toby Himes, the recipient of a Purple Heart, served in Vietnam in the same unit as Peter Abbott. Himes’s specialty was ordnance. Like Stone, he was trained to blow things up. A trap plac
ed on Toby’s phone shows calls made to Peter Abbott’s private number.

  Three names on the table and they all connect: Dick Stone, domestic terrorist, former FBI; Toby Himes, former military with training in explosives; Peter Abbott, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on the fast track to a political career.

  The Abbott link is way too hot for an SAC in a field office to handle alone. But Galloway knows if he is going to follow this trail, it will have to be solo. And extremely treacherous. His equanimity in that meeting is a façade.

  “What about our request for the hit on Herbert Laumann?” “Not a word.”

  “We knew it would take weeks,” Angelo grumbles. “Some low guy at headquarters has to write a document and get it to the attorney general, then back to the director, and back on down. What’s your problem, Mike?” Donnato: “At this point, we have to ask: Do you trust the chain of command? Why does Toby Himes, a known associate of terrorists, have the private number of the number-two man in the FBI?” Galloway tries again.

  “Let’s stay on track. One scenario is for Ana to hang in there until Stone shows his cards — who he’s working for, and to what end. Until he slips up.” Donnato: “Stone ain’t gonna slip.”

  “Operations are fluid,” Angelo argues reasonably. “We started out looking for one thing; now we’ve got two focuses: Stone and FAN.” Donnato: “They’re the same.”

  With the good side of his face, Angelo agrees. “Stone is running a cell of FAN. We have an operative in deep cover; this thing is going where we want it to go. At this point, it’s real simple: Watch the boat.” “While we’re watching, he buries Ana Grey up to the neck like that kid.” “What does Ana want?” Galloway asks.

  “She wants to stay in,” Donnato replies. “She wants to be a hero.” Galloway considers his cigar.

  “Does she know what it means to be a hero? A hero is a picture in somebody’s office.” There is a prolonged silence.

  Finally, it’s Galloway, his voice reluctant and low, who says it: “Do we have a problem in-house?” From the look on the faces of his two trusted agents, veterans whose combined service records add up to almost forty years, Galloway can no longer ignore the elephant in the room.

  “Approach Peter Abbott like you would any other bad guy. This stays with us. For her own security, keep Ana out of the loop.” They nod.

  Around a conference table in Los Angeles, in complete secrecy and at great personal risk, three men who put loyalty above all else agree to launch a clandestine investigation to determine whether the deputy director of the FBI is aiding and abetting a group of domestic terrorists.

  Thirty-one

  “Get out of my way.”

  Stone rummages through the kitchen drawers and then moves to the front closet as Megan follows him from room to room.

  “Julius — what are you doing?”

  “You should know.”

  “I have no idea!”

  From the safety of the landing on the staircase, beneath the eye of the pinhole camera inside the German clock, the black-and-white kitten cries, one paw curled. Sitting there and stroking him, I try to fathom Dick Stone’s state of mind. He seems possessed, as if powerful aromas are assaulting him from every side. As he pushes Megan aside, his body seems to be aflame with irritation.

  “The whole superstructure of this country is collapsing,” he says, charging upstairs. “There’s downward pressure on everything.” “Including me,” she replies, exasperated, as they pass.

  I take the kitten in my lap and watch from a child’s point of view as the arguing parents thunder by. Stone’s boots raise dust on the runner tacked along the treads — which I remember checking out, piece by piece, for false compartments beneath the stair. That was before the discovery of the arms cache — before I knew that Daddy stole the bunnies that were rescued from starvation at the dump, in order to feed the rattlesnakes that were guarding Daddy’s guns.

  “It’s everywhere,” Stone is lecturing. “Even for people who are medium well-off. Nobody can make it anymore.” “Could the apocalypse wait until Saturday? I’ll drive you wherever you want to go after the market.” “You?” He laughs as they disappear inside the bedroom.

  “Oh, stop being silly,” clucks Megan, but a few minutes later she is heading back downstairs with a purpose.

  I find her in the dining room, digging through the sideboard until she has what she is looking for — two bankbooks I have already examined. Neither shows a balance of more than fifteen hundred dollars.

  “Phew!” She uses them to fan herself dramatically. “Last time he was in a mood like this, he took out three hundred dollars with no memory of what happened to it.” “He doesn’t remember? Really?”

  She slips the bankbooks in her pocket.

  “We have ‘happy Julius days,’ ‘depressed Julius days,’ and ‘just plain crazy.’” “How can you stand it? I thought when you left for Lillian’s funeral, you might not come back.” “We fight, but that’s the way it is. We’ve been together a long time, Darcy.” “That’s what women say whose husbands beat them up.” Mistake!

  Megan’s eyes narrow, defending her man.

  “Julius has never laid a hand on me. Or any woman.” Stuttering, I say, “I didn’t mean to say Allfather was like that.” “It has gotten worse.” She considers me with an insinuating stare. “Actually, a lot worse since you arrived.” Sticking an agent under his nose, as we might have learned from the Steve Crawford tragedy, only succeeds in aggravating the paranoia of a person like Dick Stone. His behavior has become irrational, and Megan is close to stating the truth: Once again, the FBI is responsible for letting the genie out of the bottle.

  “I used to be able to talk him down. But what he did to Slammer…” Her voice breaks. “He was gone. He couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t physically stop him.” We hear Stone stomping around upstairs.

  “Where is he going?”

  “To see his friend Toby,” she replies fretfully. “All of a sudden he’s got to see Toby, the most important thing in the world. The single day I have to go to Portland, and it’s a long drive in the opposite direction.” “Why don’t I go along and keep an eye on him, Megan?” Her eyes rise to the old beamed ceiling and her lips pinch.

  “I wish I could get him to stay on his meds, but he refuses. Stubborn man.” She looks at her watch.

  “What time do you have to be in Portland?” I ask helpfully.

  Megan hesitates. It is clear she’ll never make it to the market to sell her hazelnut brittle unless somebody volunteers to babysit Stone.

  “Go with him,” she says, “but if he’s still like this, promise me you will not let him drive.”

  Clouds of fog lie in the valleys, and the hills are saturated black. It stays that way, everlasting twilight. Nothing moves beside the houses and fences that blur the edge of our vision except the suddenly peaceful bandit, who seems to be flying past at eighty miles an hour, as if without benefit of a vehicle, like one of those maharishis known to levitate cross-legged over the mountains of India.

  No way was he going to let me drive. He is the center. He is on the flight deck. He checks the green dials pulsing at the changes in the atmosphere — changes I imagine that he needs to know. Green dial faces are loyal. Amber ones are false. The amber ones do not worry him because he knows the truck is secure. As we crossed the misty yard, he called to me to make sure the engine hoses were clamped tight and there were no explosives hidden under the seat.

  Now he is just steering the truck, maybe wondering what in hell made him so touchy when, in fact, he has everything! They tried disinformation, but he knew the game. They sent a provocateur, whom he skillfully disabled. His euphoria is rising. He feels like Jesus Christ — in a good way.

  “Careful,” I say for the second or third time. “Who is this guy Toby Himes? I saw him at the festival.” “Old pal of mine. He’s selling a boat. Check it out.” He pats his stomach. “Lost four more pounds.” “Good for you.”

  T
hen Dick Stone decides to drive for a while in the opposite lane.

  “Let’s get there alive, if you don’t mind.”

  He laughs until he can’t stop laughing, swerving back across the road.

  No soldier at a reckless gallop, no jet pilot screaming upside down, no Navy Seal in dead of night, mad junkie, murdering, thrill-seeking sadistic monster; no hero under fire or Purple Heart, adrenaline-locked-eighteen-year-old-joyful-virgin-fucker; no one-eyed god, no God-drunk raven razoring the most primitive chartreuse skies of perpetual black rain was ever as purely out-of-body high as Dick Stone is now.

  And he is like this recently, a lot.

  The two-lane blacktop rounds a curve and we are afforded an inspirational view of mountains meeting mountains, whispering to the horizon beyond the wide green water of the Columbia River. There are a preposterous number of waterfalls in the mountains along this road, and we are passing yet another, a needle-thin cascade that falls maybe two hundred feet, raising clouds of mist that blanket stands of wildflowers — white anemones, Dick Stone has said.

  “Beautiful.”

  “That’s the spirit of Bob Marley, right there.”

  “Bob Marley? Are you a fan of reggae music?” I ask just to say something.

  “Major fan. He had it right about Babylon nation.” “What is Babylon nation? When Slammer was going on about it, I figured he was just stoned.” “Babylon is the Vampire. The inability of the white race to live in the natural world without destroying it. Babylon System is America, the whore of nations, gorged on luxury and fornication — but remember, that’s before Armageddon.” “Gotcha.”

  “See these waterfalls? A gargantuan river of melted ice comes raging down from Canada, fifty miles an hour, a thousand feet deep, gouging through those cliffs.” Stone is in a kind of rapture. “You want to talk cataclysmic?” “All because of the white man.”

  He disregards my wit. “It’s coming.”

  “What is?”

  “The Big One.”

  “Another cataclysm?”