gas.'
Halloran's pencil froze on a pageful of scribbles. Roadrunner sat perfectly still, staring at lines of data scrolling by on the monitor, seeing nothing.
'How sure are they?' Gino asked, his voice tense, his words clipped.
'Shafer didn't know, but he called the agent in Beldon, gave him some background, told him about the call from Grace.' He took a breath, upset by the mere mention of her name. 'He'll fill us in on what they know when we get there.'
Up front in the cab, Harley listened to the exchange on the intercom and pushed the accelerator to the floor.
Ten minutes later they drove into Beldon, flying past a speed-limit sign so fast that Bonar couldn't read it. The streets were dark and quiet, but the parking lot of the Missaqua County Sheriff's Office was lit up like one of those casinos in the middle of the prairie, crowded with dark, nondescript sedans. Magozzi suspected the inside of the cinder-block building was equally crowded with dark, nondescript suits. Harley rocked to a stop and within seconds, all of them exploded from the RV's front door like fizz from a punctured pop can.
Sheriff Ed Pitala was waiting for them outside the front entrance, a cigarette smoldering at the corner of his mouth. He looked lean and mean and nowhere near his sixty-plus years, and it wasn't a stretch to imagine him slamming a Federal agent up against a wall. But he was all smiles when he saw Halloran and Bonar.
'Mike Halloran, it's been too damn long. You missed the Association golf tournament.. . Jesus, Mike. You look like roadkill that isn't quite dead yet. What the hell is going on?'
Halloran grabbed his hand and kept shaking it the whole time he was talking, as if he'd forgotten to let go. 'The women we're looking for are in big trouble, Ed, and we've got no time at all. Anything we should know before we go in there?'
Ed crushed his cigarette out in a flowerpot of dirt that was sprouting Marlboro filters. 'Just a bunch of spooks running around chewing up my place and bossing me around for no reason they'll tell me. That phone call from your friend in Minneapolis shook 'em up some. It was chilly in there to begin with, but now I'm skating on a real thin patch of ice. But I'm still the head rooster. I got my people out looking for Doug Lee, and that's all I care about.'
'Have you heard anything from the road?' Bonar asked.
'A couple deputies have called in. Nothing yet.'
Agent Knudsen intercepted them in the lobby, and, given the circumstances, he was surprisingly cordial. Magozzi figured him for one of the public relations front guys that the FBI used to smooth ruffled feathers while they ran interference. His expression remained neutral until Magozzi introduced Harley and Roadrunner.
'And this is Officer Davidson and Officer . . . Road.'
Harley tried his hardest to look legit, but Roadrunner didn't even bother-it was hopeless for him.
'Undercover,' Magozzi added quickly.
Knudsen still looked skeptical.
'Computer crimes,' Harley said, and Knudsen nodded as if that explained everything.
Knudsen glanced at the sat phone clutched in Roadrunner's hand. 'Did you have any luck reconnecting with your women?'
Magozzi shook his head. 'No luck reconnecting, no luck tracing. You've got to give us something, Agent Knudsen. They're in the middle of this somehow, and we need every scrap of information you've got so we know where to start looking.'
'That's already been negotiated. I'll give you what I can, although I don't think it will help. But you gentlemen need to understand something up front: This is our show. Paul Shafer and the Minneapolis Field Office have no jurisdiction, and we call the shots. Letting you in so you can find your missing agent is a personal favor, but if you interfere in any way with our operation, we'll pull you off the road, is that clear?'
Everyone nodded.
'As you already know, we've lost three agents, and we certainly don't want to see the Bureau lose another one, but we're talking about many more lives at stake here, and thatwill take priority.'
And that was the sentence that brought it all home. Everyone was momentarily shocked into silence. Magozzi was thinking that just a few hours ago, he'd been pelting softballs at a circular target, trying to send Gino into a dunk tank, rubbing a stomach abused by more deep-fried food than he normally ate in a year. A few hours. Apparently, that was all it took for the world to tilt on its axis and send everything that made sense sliding off.
'Well, Christ, man, then give us something we can use.'
Knudsen's eyes went over his head. 'Sheriff Pitala? May we use your office?'
'Why the hell not? You'd use it anyway. But gee, thanks for asking.'
Sheriff Ed Pitala was in his office even when he wasn't. The place was cluttered with dozens of family photos, most of them featuring big, dead fish on stringers.
Agent Knudsen helped himself to the desk and chair while the others stood. Harley and Roadrunner hung back by the door, Hallo-ran and Bonar kept a respectful distance, but Magozzi and particularly Gino were in-your- face close to the desk.
'As of this moment, you're an official part of an FBI operation, and you will remain in Missaqua County after this wraps up for debriefing.' Knudsen looked at each of them. 'All of you. Understood?'
'Understood,' Magozzi said, and everyone nodded.
'All right. We've had a watch on a cell up here for over two years.'
Halloran, who had some familiarity with Wisconsin's penchant for creating and attracting fringe groups, frowned. 'What kind of a cell? White supremacists? Militia?'
Knudsen made a face. 'That's the problem. They don't fit the standard profiles. They're farmers, business owners, working-class men, some of them decorated veterans, and no history on any of the men that attaches them to groups like that. No suspicious activity of any kind, except what attracted our attention in the first place.'
'You found out they were making fucking nerve gas.'
Knudsen's eyes twitched at Gino's interruption and his language. He found a photo of an obscenely whiskered fish on the wall and just stared at it. 'We do not have any confirmation on that, and I will not discuss the details of our investigation. All you need to know is that something they did rang a lot of bells in Washington recently, and we immediately sent in three men to try to infiltrate the group. Three days ago, those men called in their first success and gave us two things: next Friday's date and the letter E.'
'What's the E mean?' Magozzi asked.
'Event.' He paused a moment, let that sink in, then gave Sheriff Halloran a nod. 'The next thing we knew, you had our agents on slabs down in Wausau.'
Magozzi watched the man take a breath. It was the first visible break in his demeanor, and he wondered if Knudsen had known the murdered agents personally, if maybe they'd been friends.
'So,' Knudsen continued, 'we moved in fast, really fast. Within four hours, we had every agent we could get on the ground here. We had a few names of people our agents thought were key. We just finished executing warrants on the homes and businesses of all of them. If there was anything there in the first place, it's not there now. Neither are the men. We've got the county locked down tight, and we're watching every vehicle in and out.'
'Oh, yeah?' Harley challenged him. 'Well, we just drove in here in a rig big enough to carry a hundred if we packed them in, and we didn't have any trouble.'
Knudsen gave him a nasty smile. 'You've had two cars on you since you crossed the line.'
Gino's brows went up to impressed height, a place they'd never been when the FBI was involved.
Magozzi said, 'So something's going down, and you've got until Friday to stop it.'
'It might be worse than that. We suspect the call from our agents was intercepted-that's what got them killed-so they could have dismantled the entire operation and moved it somewhere else .., or,worst-case scenario, maybe they moved up the schedule and we don't have until Friday anymore.'
Magozzi felt his stomach drop. 'You have a target?'
'No.'
Gino was dumbfounded. 'Jesus Christ, these people are going to hit something and you don't even know what?'
