“He’s a good boy,” Nadine said when Howard shut off the virgil.
“Yeah, I know. Too bad he’s turned into a teenager.”
“You survived it.”
“Once. I don’t know if I can do it again.”
“I have great faith in you, General Howard. You are, after all, a leader of men. One boy, how hard could it be?”
They both grinned.
15
A pair of armed guards — heavily armed guards — stepped from a cedar planked and shingled kiosk and waved the cars to a stop at a big wood-and-wire gate. The men were in camouflage clothing, and one of them kept his assault rifle trained on the ground right next to the car as the other man approached. Aside from the rifles, they had sidearms, big sheath knives, and some kind of grenades strapped on.
They must be burning up in that, Morrison thought. It was in the high eighties out here, even in the woods.
“Colonel Ventura,” the guard said. He saluted. “Good to see you again, sir.”
Morrison’s roommate of last night, Missey, was at the wheel. As they drove through the gate in a ten-foot-tall chainlink fence topped with coils of razor wire, Morrison said, “Colonel Ventura? What is this place?”
“The rank is honorary,” Ventura said. “I did some work for the man who runs the place, once. And let’s call it a… patriot compound.”
There was a car in front of them with Ventura’s operatives, and one behind them, special vehicles rented at a place Morrison didn’t think was going to run Hertz out of business. The guy who provided the cars had been covered in what looked like Maori tattoos, including his face, and the deal had been done in cash.
The drive from there had turned into a ride in the country, about forty-five minutes’ worth to this place.
Morrison put two and two together: Idaho, men with guns in paramilitary gear, razor wire. “Some kind of militia group,” he said. “Neo Nazis or white supremacists?”
“Let’s just say if you were black, it would be a lot harder to call in the favor.”
“Jesus.”
“These people speak very highly of him, yes, but I doubt he spends much time here.”
Morrison shook his head.
“Then again, it is unlikely in the extreme that anybody will sneak in here and kidnap you,” Ventura said. “Certainly not anybody of the Oriental persuasion.”
“I thought you said the Chinese wouldn’t send somebody who looked Chinese.”
They passed another trio of armed men in jungle camo sitting on or standing next to a military vehicle, a Hummer or Humvee or whatever. The three silently watched the cars go past, and when Morrison looked back, he saw one of the men hold up a com and speak into it.
“That’s only if they want to sneak up on you. The Chinese don’t like to delegate certain functions — they don’t trust each other, much less round-eyes. If you arrange a meeting with them for something they want, they’ll send someone who looks and acts the part. They won’t want you to doubt their sincerity.”
The narrow dirt road curved through another thick patch of woods, then into a cleared space maybe three or four acres big, with several prefab metal and wooden buildings centered in the clearing, all painted a drab olive green. A big air-conditioner rumbled in the background, spewing vapor into the hot afternoon.
There were more military-style vehicles, more armed men — as well as several armed women — and a pair of flags flying from a tall wooden pole in front of the largest of the structures. There was Old Glory, and under it, a shining white flag with what looked like a pair of crossed yellow lightning bolts over a line drawing of a hand.
“Sons of Pure Man,” Ventura said, watching Morrison as he looked at the flags. “Empowered by God Almighty to smite the wicked, scourge the impure, and kick the asses of anybody else who would mongrelize the true race.”
“These people are friends of yours?” Morrison said.
“These people will help me keep the wily Chinese from grabbing you, draining you dry, and then smiling politely as they hand your widow your head with an apple stuffed into its mouth, on a platter. We aren’t family here, but allies are where you find them — sometimes you have to overlook a few little cultural or philosophical differences.”
Morrison sighed, but didn’t say anything else. Ventura had a point. He was about to go into negotiations with people who had been wise in the ways of political and court intrigue for five thousand years. Being ruthless was not a problem for a culture with as much practice at it as they had. And he had hired Ventura for his expertise. As long as he did the job, Morrison didn’t care how.
“So now you put in a call to your friend the used car buyer and invite him to drop round for a little chat. He won’t like it, but he’ll come, especially if he’s figured out who you are, and that you might indeed have something worth selling.”
“And after that?”
“Well, once they know you are where they can’t get to you, then we can leave. Further communication can be relayed through here — the general has quite an up-to-date collection of electronics — and with any luck, we can keep them believing you are still here until the deal is done.”
“And after the deal is done — if it is?”
“One step at a time, Dr. Morrison. We’ll burn that bridge when we have to burn it. Oh, and by the way, after we step out of the car? Assume that everything we say is being monitored — because it probably is. They can’t hear us in here because we’re protected by certain devices, but outside, you can book it that somebody will have a shotgun mike or even a laser reader on us at all times.”
“ ‘Allies,’ you said?”
“Trust no one and no one can betray you. Just good tactics is all. Ah. There’s the general, come to welcome us.”
Jackson “Bull” Smith was no more a general than Ventura was a colonel, save to the bunch of mouthbreathers who hut-hut-hutted around his compound in the Idaho woods. Thirty years ago, Smith had been an Army infantryman, done some fighting in the Middle East, and more ground-pounding in one of the never-ending eastern European wars, but he’d never gotten past master sergeant, and that only when he got tapped to serve in the unit quartermasters, where he spent his last two tours. Still, he knew the Army way as well as any decent NCO, had seen legitimate action — he had a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star — and he was very canny. It was true you couldn’t run an army without sergeants, and Smith knew the ropes well enough to organize a bunch of half-assed warrior-wannabes into a fair imitation of soldierly discipline. At the very least, they were good robbers, because that was chiefly how they raised their operating funds. So far, they had knocked over supermarkets, banks, a theater multiplex, an armored car, and a small Indian casino, all without being caught or losing a man, and without killing too many bystanders. Ventura knew their M.O., and he’d sort of halfway kept track. Smith’s boys had stolen somewhere in the range of six to seven million dollars in the last year alone, Ventura guessed.
You could buy a lot of Idaho backwoods and MREs for seven million dollars.
As Smith stepped forward to shake his hand, Ventura nodded crisply at the man, a choppy, military bow. “General.”
“Please, Luther, it’s ‘Bull.’ ”
Ventura suppressed a smile. Yeah, he thought it was bull, too. “I don’t want to break discipline in front of the men.”
“Understood,” Smith said.
Ventura didn’t know how much of the pure race crap Smith really believed, if any. The money and power were probably a lot more attractive, since Smith’s history, military and otherwise, didn’t show any particular contention with or hatred of any of the “mongrel” races until lately, but — you never knew. Pushing sixty, ole Bull here had been at this militia game for about ten years. He was living high on the hog, considering the location. Good food, good booze, women, toys, and the admiration and obedience of a couple hundred men, give or take. There were a lot worse ways to spend your time if you were an old ex-sergeant with no other skills.