FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson had finally reached Agent Devereaux at his Des Moines hotel on a land line.
“Just a second,” Eugene said. Then: “Shit, the battery on the cell’s dead. We worked late, got our man up here. All right, now what’s this about Gracie?”
“She’s alive.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“Okay. After Major Walker was discharged from the Army-”
“Stop. You went ahead with the search on Walker?”
“Eugene, I had a bad feeling.”
“All right, Jan. I’ve had those feelings, too.”
“Anyway, he holed up on a mountain in Idaho, got married, had a son. He was plotting a military coup. We received an anonymous videotape twelve years ago. We got lucky, apprehended him in Idaho ten years ago. Top secret.”
“Must be why I never heard about it.”
“Must be. Anyway, before he could be tried-oh, Elizabeth Brice was one of the Justice Department prosecutors on his case-his followers took a hostage and threatened to return her in pieces unless Walker was released.”
“Let me guess-Elizabeth Brice was the hostage.”
“Yep. So McCoy released Walker, and Walker released her.”
“And what happened to Walker?”
“Died in Mexico. Heart attack. Probably precipitated by a few CIA bullets.”
“Probably. Point is, he’s history.”
“Except he had a son, fourteen at the time, makes him twenty-four today. Blond hair, blue eyes. We captured Walker when he took the boy to a hospital. They had to amputate his right index finger, spider bite. After Walker was arrested, the boy disappeared. Doctor assumed he died up in the mountains.”
“From a spider bite?”
“Hobo spider, like the brown recluse. It can be fatal if untreated.”
“Did you run a search on him?”
“Nothing. But there’s more. Every person involved with Walker’s prosecution-the judge, three Justice lawyers, including your friend, James Kelly, and two agents-are dead. Everyone, Eugene, except-”
“Elizabeth Brice and Larry McCoy.”
“Yep.”
“Jesus.”
“There’s more.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Our ID on the abductor, Gracie’s soccer coach, remembered something about the abductor that he didn’t disclose after Jennings hung himself.”
“What’s that?”
“The abductor was missing his right index finger.”
“Damn.”
“There’s more. The call-in from Idaho Falls positively ID’d Gracie in a white SUV with two men, one with a Viper tattoo.”
“Stop. I had an agent in Boise-”
“Dan Curry.”
“Yeah, Curry. He went to that source and showed him the blowups. His 302 said the guy could not ID Gracie or the men or the tattoo.”
“That’s what his 302 says, Eugene. But I called the source. Curry never visited him.”
Eugene was silent for a moment. “I smell a rat.”
“You got a bad feeling?”
“Yeah, I got a bad feeling. We’re officially reopening the Gracie Ann Brice investigation-and if they took her across state lines, that gives us federal jurisdiction. It’s my case now. I’ll notify Washington, right after I call Stan.”
“The director?”
“The one and only. What else?”
“Colonel Brice and the father have tracked these men to northern Idaho, a mountain called Red Ridge outside Bonners Ferry. Place is a national campground for these Aryan Nations types and militias and other assorted wackos. That’s real close to Ruby Ridge.”
“Great. Two things, Jan: First, if Walker’s son is killing everyone he figures is responsible for his father’s death, is he after the president?”
“Agent Curry didn’t suppress evidence in a kidnapping case on his own.”
“Yeah.”
“Eugene, if they’re after McCoy and we know it, we’d have that mountain under round-the-clock surveillance, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“With HRT?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the second thing?” Jan asked.
“Why’d they take Gracie?”
DAY TEN
Four years before he will become President of the United States of America, FBI Director Laurence McCoy is having breakfast in the Senate Dining Room with the Majority Leader, trying to convince the senator that the Bureau’s budget should be increased despite the FBI sniper killing that woman at Ruby Ridge. An aide hurries over and whispers in his ear. McCoy excuses himself. A situation has arisen.
Director McCoy is briefed on his way out of the Capitol. Elizabeth Austin, an Assistant U.S. Attorney on the Major Charles Woodrow Walker prosecution team, was kidnapped when she returned home last night. A handwritten note states that she will be returned in pieces unless the major is released from the maximum-security prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. They gave him twenty-four hours. The Hostage Rescue Team has been mobilized.
Abductions of federal judges and prosecutors by drug lords and terrorists are daily occurrences in Colombia and Mexico and other third-world countries. But not in the United States of America. That cannot be allowed to happen here; for if it does and if the government gives in to the abductors’ demands, the rule of law in America will die. And if it happens on the current FBI director’s watch, his dream of living in the White House will surely die as well.
“I won’t do it!”
Director McCoy is back in his office at FBI Headquarters, surrounded by the Assistant Director, the Special Agent in Charge of the Critical Incident Response Group, and the leader of the Hostage Rescue Team.
“Release Walker,” HRT leader Tom Buchanan says. “We’ll plant a transponder in his shoe, we’ll track him until he releases the hostage, and then my snipers will kill him.”
“Like they killed that mother at Ruby Ridge? Shit, Tom, I’ve got two Congressional investigations and a fucking federal lawsuit over your goddamn snipers! And the Majority Leader said to forget a budget increase!”
Larry McCoy turns and stares out the window. He can see the White House in the distance, just city blocks away geographically but close enough to touch politically. And the decision he makes at this moment will determine if Laurence McCoy ever inhabits that house. He turns back.
