by Kirk Russell
“They go to jail and there’s a record of them,” Jace answered.
“Under ten minutes, the PG&E manager said, so efficient but still a kind of ‘look at us, look what we’re doing.’ No, it was them saying ‘we’re telling you what we’re going to do.’”
“And self-righteous about it,” Jace said.
I nodded. “Yeah, carrying a banner for justice.”
“Which means they weren’t enemy sleepers,” she said.
“No, this was bold and in your face. This was ‘we want you to know.’”
“Like the flag this morning.”
“Exactly.”
We were both quiet, and Jace finished eating as I paid.
“Thank you for lunch,” she said.
“My pleasure.”
She laughed, then as we got in the car, said, “I agree. We’re looking for our own. We’re looking for Americans. We always were. But not with the cyberattacks.”
“Right, the cyber is bigger than them.”
“So a collection of small domestic cells with some common cause.”
“Something like that,” I said.
It was near dusk when we checked out Francine Macomb’s American River cottage. It was farther up the river than the ad would lead you to believe.
We didn’t see any vehicles, but there were multiple tracks in the gravel driveway.
“She gave us permission,” I said. “Let’s take a quick look.”
No one answered, so I looked in windows but saw little and decided to follow the path down to the river. The trail for the most part was drying, but as I neared the junction with the public path there was dried mud with a boot print. Which brought me back to Idaho and asking Bill Mazarik, “How will we know him?”
“From his boots,” Mazarik had said. “Kelley Zipper Tactical Boots. We all loved them.”
I’d researched the boot and had a feel for its sole. This was similar enough to take a photo and send to Jace, who knew all the Internet tricks. She called a few seconds later.
“Do you remember what Mazarik said?” I asked.
“Oh, right, the boots.”
“I’m on my way back.”
I drove as Jace worked on the boot print. She wanted an answer before we got back to the field office, and I understood. We had so many tips we checked them off as fast as we could.
A few minutes later she looked over at me and said, “If you were targeting electrical pathways or rural telecom facilities, that cottage is a good location.”
I agreed, but we didn’t have anything to show for the day.
“Did you write down the exact boot?” she asked.
“Kelley Zipper Tactical.”
“You’re funny with what you store away. You don’t remember half the computer things I teach you but then you remember all these random things,” she said.
“It was the way Mazarik said how much they all liked the quality of that boot.”
She got quiet then turned and said, “Grale.”
“What?”
“You’re awesome. I mean it. After Macomb couldn’t pick out Corti’s face, I wasn’t for checking out the house, but so what. Remembering a boot print and recognizing it in dried mud, that’s awesome. Look.”
She turned her phone screen toward me.
“It’s a match,” she said.
“Okay, but we don’t know whether other manufacturers use the same sole.”
“No other manufacturer came up.”
“It’s the Internet. It doesn’t prove anything.”
She ignored me and said, “Now we have two things, her worry and a possible boot match. We want to find out who’s staying here. The field office here is strapped. We’ll have to watch it ourselves and brief them at the office.”
“I’ll watch until someone comes home or until one in the morning. At one I’ll leave if there’s nothing.”
There was nothing. No one came home to the little cottage with a river view while I was there, but there were new bombings south of Sacramento that night, a small substation and an electrical tower. I was asked to assist Sacramento agents in collecting evidence, so I gathered up my gear at dawn. We’d take separate cars, and the domestic terrorism supervisor made it crystal clear these were Sacramento office investigations. That left it to Jace to figure out the next step with the river cottage.
“Don’t forget to write,” she called as I shouldered the gear and left.
30
Southeast of Sacramento in Amador County, a tiny substation sat in a field, surrounded by chain-link fencing, three-foot-high ryegrass, and the yellow and orange blooms of mustard and poppies. Two Amador County deputies, who’d answered the call five hours ago, toured the Sacramento bomb techs with me trailing behind.
As near as I could tell, explosive charges had detonated simultaneously, and the concussive force from six spots crushed the substation and flattened brush.
The shock wave also dropped an old oak. I skirted that and took my time walking wider and wider circles away from the blast as the Sacramento agents, Torrez and Liu, worked the core.
During all those widening circles I worried about Julia. My phone showed I’d missed three calls from her but no message.
I walked through grasses and weeds up to my thighs, scouring the ground as the day heated. I watched for bomb evidence as I thought about my brother-in-law and best friend, Jim Kern, the guy who, in the Air Force, earned the nickname “Cool Hand Kern” for the way he’d once landed a B-52 in wind shear during a thunderstorm. Jim died in the Alagara bombing along with my sister and nephew. I wasn’t dwelling on the Alagara this morning.
I saw a morning eighteen years ago and the tears running down tough-as-nails Kern’s cheeks as he told me that Melissa, my sister, had just given birth to a girl. The baby was breathing, crying, warm, alive, and named Julia. Now Julia and I were all that was left. I’d lived alone for so long after my wife, Carrie, had died, I’d lost something that I wanted back, and I needed to help Julia find her way. I was unsure how the two thoughts connected, but they did.
In the way she stood or sat tall on a chair, Julia reminded me of my sister and a quality in our family that didn’t want to get lost. We weren’t a family with wealth or rich stories of famous relatives, but we were there when it mattered. We were there in the wars. We were stand-up when things got tough at home. I saw a kind of courage in Julia that I remembered in Melissa; it’s just “the way” in our family. It was in her and I knew if she could connect to it, it would help her.
But for burn marks in the grass I would have missed the cylindrical fragment that was likely part of one of the bombs. I bagged it and we assessed everything we’d gathered at the tiny substation before moving on to the high-voltage tower downed within minutes of the substation explosion. The electrical lines were no longer hot, though in my head I heard the hissing as power lines sliced air and slid along the falling tower. I pictured the steel frame crumpling. Fragments of the porcelain insulators were scattered in the weeds. Liu and Torrez had it covered and didn’t need me. They agreed, and I shook hands with both, then left.
I tried Julia again as I drove away but still didn’t reach her. I called Mara.
“Hey, my niece is getting random e-mails and social media messages that suggest she’s part of an ongoing effort to topple the government. ‘Rewrite the Rules’ is a heading on several of them. The e-mail addresses are similar to, but not the same as, some of her friends’. Are those coming from us?”
“I can’t talk about your niece. You know that.”
“She says an app that detects intruders is lighting up, meaning someone is on her computer,” I said. “Do you know anything about that?”
“What did I just say?”
After a silence I said, “I believe her.”
“Where exactly are you?”
“South of Sacramento in Amador County. If we’re phishing Julia, I want to know.”
“I’m going to forget this conversation.”
&n
bsp; “Don’t do that.”
“You could jeopardize your active status pushing into investigations you could compromise just by being there,” he said.
“I haven’t stuck my nose anywhere. Julia called me. She may have screwed up with who she’s chosen as friends, but no one is going to wrap her in by tricking her,” I said.
“As in frame her? This conversation is over.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
I killed the call and texted Jace I was on my way back to Sacramento. She texted back she was down the street from the river cottage and to hurry. A few seconds later, she called.
31
“We’re on,” she said. “I just talked to SWAT. They’ve got a small drone they want to get up first. We’re live. Corti is here.”
“You saw him?” I asked.
“Drove up in a white Ford Taurus. Doesn’t really seem like his kind of car.” She laughed.
“Where are you watching from?”
“A neighbor gave us a spot down the street. It’s nice. It’s a rental over a garage. I’m very happy with it. Good view and a bathroom. He’s here. We’ve got him, Grale.”
I said, “Text me the address. I’m half an hour out.”
“Hang on, I’ve got more. I talked to the gun-shop owner again in Pocatello, where Corti used to buy ammo when he was in the Brigade. He opened up a little.”
“Sure, they’re losing power in Idaho, and he’s figuring out he needs electricity,” I said.
“Corti’s a regular who hasn’t been in to buy ammo in almost three months,” she said. “Or that’s what he told me. He also said Corti is rock-solid American and one of the good guys. He thinks we’re looking for the wrong man.”
I’d talked to the gun-shop owner several days ago, and he’d done a riff on Waco and the FBI. He was condescending about my motives.
“Corti was careful not to show much of his face this morning,” she said.
“So you looked at his boots.”
“Of course,” she said, “and he had them on, so maybe Mazarik’s boot story is true. I saw more of his face when he moved something shaped like a bag of concrete or sand.”
“That could fit. Sand is a way to help create a stable platform for shooting.”
“What came next were a green duffel bag and a folding tripod that looked like prone-shooter gear. He transferred everything to a brown Yukon that pulled up a few minutes later. The man who got out was dressed and acted like he knew there could be surveillance. I couldn’t get any kind of good look at him. Baggy clothes. Head hidden. He went straight into the house.”
“Is he still in there?”
“As far as I know.”
“Does our SWAT team have the river side covered?”
She replied, “They will, but not yet.”
“And Corti switched into the Yukon?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“So now he’s got a vehicle he can take off-road, it’s big enough to sleep in, and as far as we know both are in the house.”
“Correct. Wherever the second man goes, undercover officers will go with him. We go with Corti. Or I go if you don’t get here in time, in which case you catch up and I call the Sacramento field office and ask for backup.”
Corti came out just as I got there. He was long-limbed and lean. He moved easily, even carrying a red metal ammunition locker that looked heavy as he lifted it onto the passenger seat and put the seatbelt around it, and then loaded a cooler and another gear bag. He laid a coat on a back seat and got in the driver’s side.
“Go time,” Jace said.
“Where’s the other guy? He didn’t help carry anything out.”
Jace didn’t answer because she was talking with the SWAT commander as we pulled away a block and a half behind Corti. It was a situation where we needed at least two more surveillance vehicles. After ID’ing Corti, Jace talked with SWAT as I drove. They were ready to move into the house as soon as they identified where the second man was inside.
When Jace ended the call she said, “Within five minutes they’re inside.”
Five minutes went by, then ten and twenty and we hadn’t heard anything. Jace said, “Hey, you’re old enough to know. Does that old Yukon Denali have hands-free phone capability?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.”
Jace’s phone rang. It was the SWAT commander. No one was in the house, so the second man must have gone out a window to the river path much earlier. They had spread out and were looking for him.
Ahead, Corti got on the 50 eastbound, and we followed him past Folsom and into the foothills toward Placerville. Jace called for more backup, and two agents got on the road behind us. That led to the old debate: keep following and see who he leads us to, or apprehend now.
“What do you think?” Jace asked.
“I think we follow for now.”
That led to a two-lane county road before Placerville. We kept him in sight and figured we had him cold. At some point he’d put it together that the car behind was following and so were others. Granted, he was a skilled sniper, but overwhelming odds tend to make suspects surrender. My way was to keep it peaceful. You can project body language with a car to let a suspect know it doesn’t have to be a shootout.
Enough backup was almost to us when Corti braked hard and turned right onto a road that served a handful of houses and a ranch below. He drove through an open wooden gate and out onto a dirt track into a meadow and stopped. The meadow was bright with wildflowers. Corti got out and looked around.
“He’s out of room,” Jace said.
“We’re missing something. He’s not out here to picnic.”
“Some sort of meeting,” Jace guessed. “Out here where no one can overhear.”
“Or he picked up on us following him driving, or before that, back at the house.”
“But now he’s parked in a meadow.” I didn’t have the answer either. I looked at Corti, then at a broken-down barn in the distance as Jace confirmed our backup didn’t miss the turn onto this road. She talked them through it. East of the open field the hills were grown over with oak and pine, and farther back the hills became mountains and the slopes were forested. Where could he go from here? I didn’t see any way out other than the way we came in.
I felt like a fool when I heard the sound and saw a Bell helicopter rise over a ridge. It came fast and we were too far away. It skimmed treetops and yet Corti, who’d gotten back in the Yukon, didn’t get out yet. He was doing something inside, moving around. I took a dozen sequential photos of the helicopter’s call numbers as its downdraft flattened the meadow grasses, and called an FAA emergency number on my phone.
Then I watched Corti get out of the Yukon and duck under the helicopter blades with a gear bag in his right hand. He got in, and the helicopter rose, its nose dipping as it raced away.
32
When the helicopter disappeared on a northwest heading, I asked the FAA for help tracing it. We asked for help from CHP, local law enforcement, everyone. Another thought struck me. We may have underestimated Corti’s importance, may have misread his role. We had him as a disgruntled loner activated by opportunity and ties to a misguided militia leader. How does a helicopter escape fit into that?
I left Jace with the backup agents and went down to the meadow. Corti had fussed with something in the vehicle as the helicopter arrived, and I wanted to check it out alone first. When I looked in the windows nothing was obvious. The red ammo box wore a seatbelt on the passenger side. A small carry-on and clothes were left behind.
The Yukon’s ground clearance was high enough for me to easily slide under, inhaling the warm sweet smell of spring meadow grasses as I did. Lying on my back I looked for unusual wiring or a tie-in to the SUV’s battery. I took my time, then shimmied out and walked the windows again.
I stepped away and called Jace. “Give me another few minutes. The doors are unlocked, the keys in the ignition, let me have a look inside before you bring anyone down here. I’ll
call you.”
“Okay, and what about going out with his name and face?”
“Give me a little longer on that,” I said.
“We’ve got a short window where it might make a difference.”
I doubted that. Corti wouldn’t catch a helicopter ride then walk into a 7-Eleven. Was it an evacuation plan similar to what he might have had in the military as a remote sniper? Or was it a prelude to something new? My gut feeling was we needed to rethink him.
“Hey, I’m going to turn my phone off as a precaution when I get inside the Yukon,” I said.
I focused binoculars on the inside of the driver’s door. First the door, then the floor mat, then up and across to the red ammunition box. Would Corti leave behind armor-piercing bullets? Not likely, so what’s up with the ammo box?
At the FBI we have the Bomb Data Center. From them I’d received a recent e-mail with info on new wireless detonators where two components are placed inside of a preset distance, let’s say a meter apart. If either component moves more than the preset distance away from the other component, then bang! One component can be placed under a vehicle, the sister component inside with a bomb. Driver gets in, drives away, and doesn’t get far.
Corti moved around in the front seats as the helicopter was landing. I had thought he was pulling out gear and ammunition. He wasn’t. He’d gotten out, opened the left rear door, and pulled only the gear bag he took with him, which was heavy. I saw it sag. I still believed it held a long gun, a sniper rifle broken down. When he’d opened the driver’s door, he didn’t open it wide. He sort of slid out and shut it. It was an odd move. What did it mean?
I opened the driver door, though less than Corti had. It was enough that I could examine the contents of the pocket in the side door. Didn’t see anything, and no wiring taped anywhere, nothing but an old Yukon interior with some gear in the back, a cooler, and a red ammo box. I turned and looked at the cooler. It was big enough. It worried me.