Firepower by John Cutter (ebook reader online .txt) 📕

“No,” she said. “He’s what he seems to be. A professional soldier.”

“And what have you learned about us and who precisely did you tell it to?”

She hesitated, looked at the picture on the printout again, then said, “I am Deirdre Elizabeth Corlin, a federal officer of the Justice Department, FBI badge number eight-two-seven-seven-one. I can now apprise you that you are under arrest for sedition and for the abduction and restraint of a federal officer. Your best bet is to release me and come with me to town, where I can arrange for you to call your lawyer. You can then turn yourself in at—”

She was interrupted by laughter — Mac Colls and Marco were both laughing, now. Gustafson was smiling crookedly. “Quite a performance, Miss Corlin. Men, take her to the available cell, and lock her up. We’ll give her some time to think things over. Then we’ll begin the interrogation. As to what we’ll do with her after that — it really depends on her.”

“What about Bellator, sir?” Mac asked.

“Once you have this woman in the cell, tell Gunny to have Bellator brought in and taken into custody. Gunny had better get a lot of help to do that. You go with him. Only shoot Bellator if necessary.”

“Suppose Bellator left the base?”

“Then take some men, find him, and kill him — as discreetly as possible. We can take no chances…”

*

It was all there, in a set of emails to six correspondents. The dark web isn’t always so dark.

The plans for the attack, discussed with the handful of men allowed to know.

There was more — Gustafson had sent an email to a source in Russia, advising him that he may need exfiltration. Professor Gustafson assured the source that the SVR would not have to support him once he was in Russia. He had most of his money in a Swiss bank account.

Did that mean Gustafson was a Russian agent?

But as he read on, it sounded as if the Russians were more like Gustafson’s allies. There were strong white nationalist undercurrents in Russia, all tangled with a hyper-right-wing version of Russian Orthodox Christianity. Still, Russian intelligence services were always delighted at any domestic terrorism chaos in the USA. They were happy to help…

The attack was laid out in one email with “FOR YOUR EYES ONLY” in the subject line. It was to take place in less than twenty-four hours.

Nine-thirty tomorrow morning.

Six cadres of Germanic Brethren from around the country were already in the D.C. area. There were twenty men in each cadre, a hundred twenty total. They would come in six trucks — trucks rebuilt from junkyard vehicles, with false license plates — and converge on the senatorial event at the Lincoln Memorial.

Three other attacks, with individual operatives, were to take place shortly before the big one — an attack on the Joint Chiefs, a suicide bomber attack at a central police station, and an attack on a site to be decided at the last moment. All three men to draw police presence away from the main attack.

Vince pored over the emails again and again and found no clues to the third decoy attack.

He looked to see if he’d gotten a reply from the email he’d sent to the FBI agent.

Nope.

He remembered Gustafson’s references to having someone inside the system. What if—

“Would you like another beer?” came a chirpy voice at his elbow.

Startled, he looked up to see the pretty black-haired waitress smiling at him. He thought he saw an invitation in her eyes for something more than beer.

Vince wished he could put it all aside and say yes to that question in her eyes. Just get lost in her arms and forget who he was and what he had to do.

But he said, “I’ll have a cup of coffee and a cheeseburger with everything you can possibly put on it.” He smiled at her. “Got work to do — and I won’t have time for dinner…”

*

“Your simple mistake, right now, Agent Corlin, is that you think someone’s going to get you out of this,” Gustafson said.

He was standing near the door of the cell, looking frankly, even pityingly, at her. Mac Colls was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching Corlin. She was sitting on her bunk, in a corner, her drawn-up knees clasped by her arms. She had a brave face but her body language said she was scared.

Mac wondered when they’d start actual physical pressure in the interrogation process. To him it seemed obvious that all this talk wasn’t going to work. The water treatment was a better move. Or just beat the crap out of her for an hour or so. She was a traitor to her race — she deserved it.

“But you see, Agent Corlin,” said Gustafson, “we’ve got friends in the Justice Department. They’re more than friends. We also have them in Defense. The Brethren are more highly placed than you realize. At this point, several persons whom you were in contact with have been detained. Any calls about attacks on Washington in the next twenty-four hours will be blocked from going up the chain of command. It’s all been arranged. It doesn’t matter what Bellator tells people — he does not appear to be a federal agent. He has no standing. False warnings about attacks happen every day, you know. Anything he says will be dismissed.”

“And we’ll have him dead and in the ground in an hour or two,” Mac said.

Gustafson raised his hand for quiet. “Miss Corlin — it’s time for you to answer our questions. How much did you find out about our plans?”

“I tried very hard — and found out very little,” she said, shrugging. “I heard the term Operation Firepower — but no sense of where and when and what