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

Gustafson snorted. “I think you’re lying. We’re going to have to get rough with you fairly soon. I have matters to arrange, but I shall be back and I will have my questions answered.”

“You think you’re not going to be in jail after all this?” she asked. “Really? Are you megalomaniacal enough to be that much in denial?”

“Do not mistake a deep-seated sense of duty to my own people for megalomania. As for denial — I know the risks. I have my own… preparations.” He gave her a wry smile. “No need to be concerned for my sake.”

“These people in government who are supposedly protecting you — they must be low level.”

He shook his head. “You’re not going to draw me out that way.”

She shrugged. “What can they hope to gain, I wonder? An attack will just make the nation more fully prepared to take your kind down.”

“This attack will be a signal for true patriots to arise from many places. Including the United States military… and the nation’s police departments.”

“I doubt it. The ‘Big Boogaloo’ won’t happen. You’re deluded, Gustafson — and you’ll be taking people like poor Mac Colls here down with you.”

“Let me deal with her,” Mac said, seething at her condescension toward him.

“Oh, you’ll have your chance if she doesn’t cooperate,” Gustafson said. “We’ll start with a form of torture you can survive — and move on from there. It’s a shame — she could be exchanged for one of our people, perhaps, at some later date, were she to cooperate. But with this kind of resistance — I doubt she’ll survive the interrogation.”

He turned and went through the door. Mac threw a final contemptuous glance at Corlin, then followed Gustafson. He turned the key in the lock and glanced through the small barred window in the door. She waved at him cheerfully, then lay back on the cot, hands behind her head, smiling.

It’s all an act, he told himself, turning angrily away. I’ll remember that sneering smile — when she’s screaming.

*

Vince rode up to the base of the rock formation, south of the Wolf Base. He switched off the bike and pushed it to a sheltered place between two boulders.

Then he went to stand on the edge of the cliff at the foot of the formation. He was wearing jeans, his own Rangers boots, a t-shirt, and his brown leather jacket. Around his hips was the army-surplus belt he’d taken from the Brethren, which held the holsters for his knife and pistol. On his back was the small pack, containing a flashlight, two bottles of water and an energy bar bought at a gas station, and sixty rounds of .50 Action Express ammunition.

He was looking north, at the ridge, the escarpment containing the Brethren’s bunker complex.

He’d spent two hours poring over maps and Google satellite images of the region around Stonewall and the Wolf Base, and it was dusk when he rode up to Sullivan Rock. The rock formation, part of the National Forest, reminded some people of a soldier facing the world from a high ridge. Carved by nature in sandstone, it reared gray-red over a shallow valley, across from the ridge containing the underground bunker complex. Wolf Base was almost two miles off, blurred by autumn mist and the smoke drifting in from fireplace chimneys around Stonewall.

Optimum tactics required Vince to make his approach from above the base. There were no clear-cut overland approaches he could take to the ridgetop on a motorcycle. The creviced northern end of the ridge was open ground, with no cover, and there were security cameras watching it. Assuming the sheer cliff would prevent intruders from the east, Gustafson had set up no security cams looking toward the back of the base.

Vince had hoped to hear police sirens by now. He’d left messages with a tip line at the FBI — he’d been unable to get through to an agent — and he’d sent a number of emails. He’d even filled out tip forms online. He had thought about calling the Sheriff — but Shaun had said Woodbridge was friendly with Gustafson and he’d been seen at Wolf Base more than once. He couldn’t be trusted.

Vince had thought about the State Police, too — but they’d just send a patrol car who’d ask around at the base if there was an Agent Corlin there. They would get a puzzled “no”. And they wouldn’t obtain a search warrant on his say-so. Not today.

Until the FBI got off the dime, he was going to have to handle this himself.

And he was going to have to walk there to do it…

He looked at the sky. There was a thin cloud cover; a nearly full moon was rising at the horizon.

Armed with the Desert Eagle and a knife, Vince started down the hillside, following a path that looked like it had been made by a mountain goat — it probably had. He was soon skidding down between stunted trees, catching hold of a branch now and then to keep from plunging headlong down the steep slope.

A few minutes later he came to an outcropping of granite, climbed down it, then descended along a zig-zag trail to the valley floor.

Vince started across, heading for the eastern side of the ridge. This was going to take a while… and the shadows were growing long.

Passing through several meadows of ferns ringed by pines, he came to a stream that ran south behind the Wolf Base ridge. A thin, intermittent hunter’s trail ran alongside the stream. He followed the spotty trail alongside the gurgling stream. When the trail vanished into thick underbrush, he found a way around atop the boulders edging the creek. Mosquitoes were out in clouds, here, swarming in the twilight. He climbed down to a muddy bank of the stream and smeared mud on