by Mike Lawson
The second thought he had was: Now I owe the son of a bitch for my life.
DeMarco and Danny reached the point in the barbed-wire fence where they’d entered Pugh’s property, both of them panting from the run through the woods. DeMarco looked behind him; he didn’t see headlights. Maybe Pugh’s men had stopped to deal with the injured man, or maybe they were checking on the lab. When DeMarco had enough breath to talk he said to Hall, ‘We found it. We’ve got the pictures.’
‘Do you have the GPS coordinates for the lab?’ she asked Danny.
‘Oh, shit!’ DeMarco said. He hadn’t even thought about that.
‘Yeah,’ Danny said. ‘I hit the waypoint as soon as we found the fake-plant door thing.’
‘The fake-plant door thing?’ Hall said, ‘What are you-’
DeMarco explained, concluding with, ‘You’ll understand when you see it.’
Danny handed Hall the GPS and said, ‘The lab’s the fifth waypoint.’
‘Good,’ Hall said, her eyes shining. ‘Goddamn good,’ she said again. ‘Give me the camera. I gotta get a warrant right away.’
DeMarco said, ‘There’s something else you need to-’
‘Not now,’ Hall said, and turned away.
‘Danny shot a guy,’ DeMarco said to Hall’s back. ‘One of Pugh’s men.’
‘What?’ Hall said.
DeMarco started to explain but Hall interrupted him.
‘We’ll worry about this guy you shot later. Right now I need a warrant.’
She walked over to her SUV, opened the rear hatch, and took out a laptop. She placed the laptop on the hood of the car and said, ‘Come on, come on,’ while the computer was starting up. Holding a penlight in her mouth, she connected the camera to the laptop and then started typing. DeMarco guessed she was e-mailing the pictures to somebody and then listened as she started talking into her phone.
‘This is Hall. I just sent you photos of Pugh’s lab and the coordinates where it’s located. Go get me a warrant. Show the judge the photos and tell him I have two witnesses, and that one of the witnesses took the photos and was in the lab. Tell him the witnesses can definitely put the lab on Pugh’s property. And if the judge gives you any shit, any shit at all, wake up Gail Bradley back in D.C.
‘While you’re getting the warrant, I want Jorgenson and three other men in the chopper and I want the chopper over that lab as fast as it can get there. Tell Jorgenson to shine lights down onto the lab but don’t land until I give the word. If Pugh’s guys fire at him, he’s to return fire. Tell him to blast their asses away. I want the rest of the team to meet me at Jubal’s front gate. The team with me will round up Jubal and whoever’s with him in his house. Get moving.’
Jesus, DeMarco thought, she sounded like George Patton.
Hall closed her cell phone and said triumphantly to herself, ‘I’ve got the son of a bitch.’
When Hall walked off to talk to the DEA agent that had accompanied her, DeMarco said to Danny, ‘Where the hell did the gun come from?’
‘I brought it with me from New York. I dis assembled it and packed it in my luggage. I thought I might need one down here, considering what we were doing.’
Goddamn airline security was useless, DeMarco thought. ‘Then why in the hell did you ask Hall for one?’ he said.
‘Would have looked funny if I hadn’t,’ Danny said.
56
‘The DEA’s arrested Pugh,’ DeMarco said.
‘Yeah, but is that-’ Mahoney said.
‘And we got something else,’ he said. He told Mahoney how Anisa Aziz had admitted to Emma that she’d been kidnapped before her uncle tried to blow up the Capitol. ‘The girl said that one of the guys who kidnapped her had some tattoos on his knuckles, and one of the yahoos they caught at Pugh’s place has the tattoos. The problem is, the girl never saw the guy’s face.’
‘So can you tie Pugh to the damn terrorist attacks or not?’ Mahoney said.
‘Probably not,’ DeMarco said. ‘I mean, not based on any evidence that the DEA has found so far. Hall’s guys-’
‘Who’s Hall?’ Mahoney said.
‘The DEA agent in charge down here, the one who arrested Pugh. Anyway, Hall’s guys will search Pugh’s place and if they find anything that ties him to the attacks they’ll let me know, but I wouldn’t count on it. This guy Pugh, he owns four hundred acres, and it’s gonna take a long time to search the place.’
‘Goddammit!’ Mahoney yelled. ‘I don’t have time for that. You gotta make Pugh admit he was involved.’
‘I know,’ DeMarco said. ‘And this is what I’ll have to do. …’
When he finished telling Mahoney what he planned, he said, ‘Hall’s gonna go nuts. She might even go to the press.’
‘I’ll take care of her,’ Mahoney said.
‘She’s good people, boss.’
‘Yeah, well, sometimes good people get screwed too,’ Mahoney said.
DeMarco waited impatiently for Patsy Hall to get off the phone. As he was waiting, Danny walked over to him and said, ‘I just finished giving a statement to the DEA guys and a lawyer. They videotaped it. They said they won’t need me again until they start prepping for the trial. Any reason I can’t go back to New York?’
‘You better check with Hall,’ DeMarco said, motioning toward the office where Hall was sitting, ‘but as far as I’m concerned you can leave. But you better understand something, Danny. You’re not done with this thing until those guys are in jail. You got it?’
‘Yeah, but I’m okay with the Queens D. A. Right?’
‘Yeah. You can go back to fencing for Tony Benedetto until they catch you for doing it.’
Danny shook his head. ‘Look, man,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t like me and Marie planned to fall in love. It just happened. One of these days, maybe you’ll find it in yourself to forgive us both.’
DeMarco stared at his cousin for a minute.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ he said and walked away.
‘I need to talk to Pugh alone,’ DeMarco told Patsy Hall.
‘Sorry,’ she said, shaking her head sadly, as if she meant it. ‘But I can’t allow that. Anytime anybody talks to Pugh, I want his lawyer and our lawyer in the room.’
One of Hall’s agents stuck his head into her office at that moment. ‘Patsy, Dick Garner’s on the phone. Line four. He wants to talk to you.’
Richard Garner was the top man at the DEA, and Hall was several rungs on the ladder below him. She had heard Garner speak a couple of times when he gave one of his sappy pep talks to motivate the troops, but she had never spoken to him.
‘I didn’t know catching Jubal Pugh was that big a deal,’ the agent said.
Patsy Hall punched a button and picked up the phone on her desk. ‘Mr Garner, this is Agent Hall.’
All DeMarco heard was Hall’s side of the conversation, which consisted mostly of yes, sir.
At one point, while she was listening, she looked over at DeMarco.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said again. ‘May I ask why? …
‘Yes, sir,’ Hall said one more time before hanging up.
Looking at DeMarco she said, ‘Mr Garner says I’m supposed to let you do anything you want. You wanna tell me what’s going on here?’
‘Sorry, Patsy, I can’t,’ DeMarco said. ‘At least not yet.’
Hall stared at him. ‘You screw up my case against Pugh, and I’m gonna get a nightstick and beat you to death. I swear to Christ I will.’
Pugh was dressed in an orange jumpsuit. At DeMarco’s request — at this point, all DeMarco’s requests were being granted — the manacles were taken off Pugh’s hands. They were seated in an office, not an interrogation room. DeMarco was seated behind the desk of whoever normally occupied the office; Pugh was in a chair in front of the desk. A DEA agent was posted outside the door, and the door was closed.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Pugh said. ‘And why wasn’t my lawyer allowed to be here?’
DeMarco didn’t say anything for a moment.
He just stared at Pugh’s unshaven face. With his pointed nose and weak chin, Pugh reminded DeMarco of a badger or a wolverine — one of those critters that makes up for its lack of bulk with pure viciousness.
‘I’m the guy who set you up, Jubal,’ DeMarco said. ‘I’m the guy that got Danny DeMarco and Tony Benedetto to cooperate with the DEA. And I’m the guy who’ll make Danny DeMarco testify against you.’
Pugh didn’t say anything.
‘You’re going to be convicted for manufacturing meth, and the judge is going to give you the maximum sentence permitted by the sentencing guidelines. He’s going to do this because he’ll be pressured by some people in Washington. Those same people in Washington are also going to promise to make him a federal judge with a lifetime appointment if he does what they want. So it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the ghost of Johnnie-fuckin’-Cochran for a lawyer, Jubal, you’re going to jail.’
Pugh blinked once.
‘You’re fifty-eight years old right now,’ DeMarco said. ‘If you’re not killed in prison, you’ll be seventy-eight or eighty years old when you get out. By then you’ll most likely have prostate cancer or colon cancer or whatever diseases afflict old men. You’ll be on death’s doorstep when you get out of prison.’
Pugh blinked again.
‘Now look around you,’ DeMarco said. ‘You’re not in an interrogation room. There’s no one-way mirror, no video camera in the ceiling, no tape recorder. It’s just you and me.’
‘Maybe you’re wired,’ Jubal said.
DeMarco shook his head. ‘I don’t want what I’m going to tell you recorded.’ He paused. ‘If you can give me what I want, I can keep you out of prison. Your property’s going to be auctioned off and your bank accounts are going to be frozen and all the money you have will be placed in the U.S. Treasury. But you get to stay out of jail — if you can deliver.’
‘So what is it? What do you want?’
‘I know,’ DeMarco said, though he really didn’t, ‘that your people forced three American Muslims to commit acts of terrorism. I know your guys — Donny Cray and that asshole Randy with the prison tats on his knuckles — killed Reza Zarif’s family, his wife and his two kids, and made him fly that plane at the White House. I know your people abducted Mustafa Ahmed’s niece to force him to blow up the Capitol. Mustafa’s niece saw the tats on Randy’s hands. And I know your guys also killed the Capitol police officer who shot Mustafa, to make sure he wouldn’t talk.’
‘That’s all bullshit.’
‘No, it’s not all bullshit, but if it is … well, then too bad for you, Jubal. You go to jail for twenty years. You see, you’re a malignant piece of shit but right now you’re a small problem. Because of what you’ve done, Muslims in this country are being persecuted and a very bad law is about to be passed. So right now, getting you to admit that al-Qaeda wasn’t behind these attacks is more important than putting your ass in the slam.’
Pugh tried to keep his face immobile but his lips twitched. Like a badger in a cage, he’d just seen a way out.
‘And we’re pretty sure you didn’t personally kill anybody,’ DeMarco said, ‘which is the reason you’re getting a break, but you have to testify against the people who did.’
DeMarco didn’t really know that Pugh hadn’t killed anyone, but he was guessing that Pugh wouldn’t have taken the risk. And even if he had killed someone — even if Jubal Pugh had pulled the trigger that had killed Reza Zarif’s kids — DeMarco was telling Pugh that he could blame their deaths on the people who worked for him.
‘Somebody has to swing for these crimes,’ DeMarco continued. ‘So you have to give the FBI enough information to convict your pals, Jubal. If you can’t do that, no deal.’
‘Is that it?’ Pugh said.
‘No. You also have to give the Bureau the guy who hired you. We know there’s a middleman, an organizer, a guy who’s been giving you directions. And we know someone very rich hired the middleman. We want those two people, Jubal. If you can’t deliver the middleman you’re of no use to us. As bad as you are, we really want the people behind these crimes.
‘And keep something else in mind,’ DeMarco said, before Pugh could interrupt. ‘Why do you think this middleman came to you? He didn’t pick you because he thought you were some sort of genius. He came to you because you’re the perfect patsy. You’re the head of a hate group, at least that’s what your Web site says, and this guy chose you because if by some chance we figured out that these Muslims were being coerced, and if we traced it back to somebody, that somebody would be you. And Jubal — going to jail for manufacturing meth is one thing. But if you don’t cooperate and we can prove you were an accomplice to murdering two kids, you’ll get the death penalty.’
Pugh sat there, saying nothing, studying DeMarco’s face.
‘I want this in writing,’ Pugh said at last. ‘And I want the document looked at by my lawyer, so if I do what you want, you won’t be able to screw me later.’
DeMarco nodded. ‘We can do that. But I need to know, right now, the name of the guy who hired you.’
‘I don’t know his name. I only met him once. I tried to have him followed, but he lost my guy.’
‘Bullshit,’ DeMarco said.
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ Pugh said.
DeMarco rose from his chair. ‘Then I guess it’s adios, Jubal. You’re no fuckin’ good to us.’
‘But I got a picture of him,’ Pugh said. ‘And a computer on my farm loaded with his e-mails.’
DeMarco sat back down. ‘Give me some details.’
* * *
DeMarco ignored Patsy Hall as he left the DEA building. He ignored her pleas, and later her threats, to tell her what was going on. He walked a block, then stopped and sat down at a bus stop. For a couple of minutes he didn’t do anything; he just sat there trying to collect his thoughts, then he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. He talked to Mahoney for approximately ten minutes.
57
The first thing Mahoney did was let everyone know that the so-called Broderick Act wasn’t going to get voted on in the House that day. This caused the expected uproar, which he ignored, and then he left the Capitol while his brethren were calling their contacts in the media.
His driver dropped him off at the Justice Department. He could have requested the attorney general and the director of the FBI to come to his office, and most likely they would have. But he liked it better this way, because after he met with the two men he was holding a press conference — he’d already given his contacts in the media the time — and he liked the idea of posing in front of the attorney general’s building.
Attorney General Simon Wall and FBI Director Kevin Collier both shook the speaker’s hand when he entered Wall’s office, but neither was particularly effusive in their greeting. They knew Mahoney was being lambasted in the press and that his approval ratings had slipped when he refused to support Broderick’s bill. Wall and Collier, in other words, didn’t feel that they had to be nice to a man who might not be the speaker much longer.
Simon Wall was a lawyer, a political appointee, and close friends with both the president and the chairman of the Democratic Party. He had a seal’s head: wet-looking, slicked-back dark hair and warm, liquid brown eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses. He looked harmless — but he wasn’t. FBI Director Kevin Collier, the man who looked like Mahoney’s old Boston terrier, was Simon Wall’s puppet.
Mahoney didn’t like either man.
Wall and Collier took seats at a small round table, and Mahoney settled into the third chair and began to speak. ‘Yesterday the DEA arrested a meth dealer in Winchester, Virginia, who is also the head of a white supremacist group. The guy who hijacked the New York shuttle, the cabdriver who tried to blow up the Capitol, and the son of my friend who tried to fly his plane into the White House were all coerced by this drug dealer’s people. In other words, these recent acts of terrorism, which the FBI has pinned on al-Qaeda and three Muslim Americans, were really
the work of a bunch of white-power nuts. In other words,’ Mahoney repeated, ‘you two guys, who jumped with all four feet on Bill Broderick’s band wagon, are gonna look like a couple of idiots.’
Wall opened his mouth to say something, but Mahoney continued. ‘Now I’m gonna tell you what really happened.’ And he did. He told them what Jubal Pugh had admitted to DeMarco. When he finished he said, ‘What you’re gonna do is this. The FBI’s gonna take charge of this shithead that the DEA’s arrested, and you’re gonna offer him immunity from prosecution provided he can give you all the people who were involved in this thing. I’ve already told the guy you’re gonna do this.’
‘What?’ Wall said. ‘You don’t have the authority to-’
Mahoney rose to his feet. ‘I gotta take a piss — if it’s okay with you, Simon, I’ll use the can here in your office — but in ten minutes I’m holding a press conference right in front of this building. I’m gonna explain to the media how we were about to pass a horrible goddamn law because of terrorist attacks that were really orchestrated by these racist peckerheads and not by good Muslim American citizens, but, thank God, the diligent agents of the DEA and the FBI have uncovered the truth. This means you guys have about half an hour to figure out a way to put a spin on this that makes you look less stupid than you really are. Now, Simon, where’s your shitter?’
A platoon of lawyers and FBI agents invaded Winchester, Virginia, and took charge of Jubal Pugh, his people, and all the evidence the DEA had gathered. Jubal’s gang was placed in a federal lockup in Washington, D.C. Jubal himself was placed in a cell at Quantico and protected around the clock by the FBI.