Randy. There was no way any of this was going to connect to us.”
That was never a certainty in Manning’s mind, or anywhere close to it. He had planned this well and chosen the operatives well, but he had no illusions. He knew that the odds were quite decent that he, personally, would be caught. He’d always told his men that they had to be willing to die for this mission. He preached it to them. McCabe was part of the Circle, of course, but he wasn’t one of the operatives. He did the necessary legal work to get everything set up to put the mission in place. But that was all.
And now things were coming to a head. It wasn’t just an idea now. It was happening.
“I think we’ll get away with it,” said Manning. “And then we’ll lie low and wait for another opportunity. But yes, Bruce, there are risks. Surely this isn’t the first time you’re realizing this?”
McCabe wasn’t dumb. Of course, he had to have been aware of the risks. But he’d placed trust in Manning, perhaps more than Manning had realized. And he hadn’t had to get his hands dirty. He wouldn’t be putting his life on the line on December 7. Maybe it was only now dawning on him what, exactly, they were going to do.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring Bruce here today, to see up close a dry run of the operation.
Or maybe it had been a good thing, in the end. If McCabe was going to go south on them, better that Manning knew that now, not afterward.
“I think we should abort,” said McCabe.
Manning put a hand on McCabe’s shoulder. “Let’s go eat, Bruce. Everyone’s tired and stressed and hungry. Let’s have some turkey and think this over. Go on ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Manning watched his lawyer walk out the door. Then he dialed his cell phone.
“Patrick,” he said, “wait five minutes and then come up to see me.”
46
Traffic was nonexistent on Thanksgiving afternoon. We got off the interstate and followed the local roads. The housing was sparse and modest, and there wasn’t much for commerce besides gas stations, bait shops, and an occasional diner. Nothing was open today.
We found the street we were looking for, aided by a small sign that said SUMMERSET FARMS with an arrow pointing to the right. I turned right and drove down a paved road.
We pulled up to a long metal gate blocking the road. On the gate was a sign reading SUMMERSET FARMS IS CLOSED.
We got out of the SUV, if for no other reason than to stretch our legs after more than two hours in the car, and walked up to the gate. Down the road, there was a long ranch-style house and a gigantic barn, all painted red. And behind that housing was farmland as far as the eye could see. Shauna had mentioned that when Global Harvest purchased the farm, it bought up neighboring farmland.
“You didn’t expect it to be open, did you?” Tori asked me. She looked like a fish out of water, a well-dressed, cosmopolitan woman in farm country. I suppose I didn’t look much like the town, either.
And no, I didn’t expect Summerset Farms to be open on Thanksgiving.
“Why the gate?” I asked.
“Who knows? Maybe vandals or robbers.”
“Yeah, maybe.” The gate was fastened to a post. It didn’t appear to be hydraulic. I pushed on it, and it moved. So I kept pushing, and it kept moving, until I had cleared a path for my vehicle.
“I’m not the lawyer,” said Tori, “but I do believe this would be trespassing.”
“Hardball, not softball,” I reminded her. “You don’t have to be a part of it. You want to go for a drive and come back in an hour?”
She thought that was amusing. “I’ll stick. It wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
With the gate out of the way, we returned to the SUV and drove up to the small parking lot. We got out and walked up to the ranch house. The front door was locked, as expected. There was a window, and I peered into the place. Not much to see for my purposes. It was a reception area with what appeared to be standard office space behind it. I guess they didn’t sell their products to walk-up customers, or if they did, it didn’t happen here.
We walked over to the barn. The main door, which was taller than me, had a gigantic padlock securing it. There were no other windows.
“Okay, that’s what I figured,” I said.
Tori peered up at me, squinting into the sunlight. “We came all this way just for this? You discover that the place is closed for Thanksgiving, try the door, peer into a window, and that’s-”
“That’s not it,” I said. “That’s just it for here.”
We returned to the SUV and retraced our steps past the gate. I closed it back up and drove down the road, following the fence line of the property. On the other side of the fence was a pretty weak-looking set of wheat crops, stubbly things, but I knew as much about wheat crops as I did astrophysics, so for all I knew the crop was doing quite well.
The land was pretty flat around here. I finally came upon a hill to my left. I followed a dirt path, which I was pretty sure was a road, up the hill and then stopped the SUV.
“Glove compartment,” I said to Tori.
She opened it and removed a fancy camera that I’d taken from Joel Lightner. She handed it to me.
I got out of the vehicle and climbed onto the hood. I helped Tori up, then helped her climb to the roof. Then I joined her.
“This is… unusual,” she noted.
The camera was something a good P. I. like Lightner would use, a high-powered lens attached to the camera that could get a decent image from over a mile away.
Through the camera, I looked out over the Summerset Farms acreage. The crops were sparse, stubbly, and brownish-green, like a neglected summer lawn. As I moved beyond the borders of the property line, the crops became even more sporadic and then nonexistent, just a bunch of dirt as far as the eye, assisted with this high- powered device, could see.
“That’s a lot of acreage Global Harvest bought that they aren’t using for wheat,” I said.
“Let me look,” said Tori.
“Hang on.” There was a large metal structure with a domed top. I didn’t know what it was. Some kind of a warehouse or silo.
Then I saw something that didn’t look like farming at all.
It looked like a bunch of guys shooting assault rifles at targets. The distance was such that I could barely register the sound of gunfire, but my eyes didn’t lie.
“Check this out.” I kept the camera in position and motioned for Tori to take it. It moved a little when she grabbed it, but it didn’t take her long to find the same thing I found.
“Oh my God,” she said. “What are they doing? I mean, I know what they’re doing. But…”
In my peripheral vision I saw a pickup truck barreling down the road toward us with a yellow siren flashing on top. The truck skidded to a stop down the hill from us. The truck’s side panel was emblazoned with SUMMERSET FARMS
SECURITY.
The man who got out was wearing a green uniform with a brown leather jacket over it. A firearm hung from his hip holster.
“Can I ask what you folks are doing?” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
He stared at me. I stared at him. We stared at each other.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“None of your business.”
“It’s our business, all right.”
“I’m exercising my First Amendment rights,” I said. Just like, apparently, they were exercising their Second Amendment rights, but I didn’t say that.
He didn’t think I was funny. He was built like a tank, plus he had a weapon.
