Leaving the deputy to watch over the prisoners and the entrance, the three men walked back to the lead Hummer and got in, with Ireland driving and Marlene in the front passenger seat. He looked over at her. "Any ladies want to get off the train, better do it now."
Marlene gave him a sideways glance and shook her head. "Screw you. Let's go, Caveman."
"Yaba-daba-doo," Ireland replied. Putting the car into Drive, he stepped on the gas.
Yeah, look who's calling who dramatic, she thought with a smile as they tore down the road. The "Caveman" had been brought into the picture shortly after Marlene called Zook from Colorado, explained the Baker Street Irregulars plan, and suggested that they were going to need help with security.
Although there were concerns that the Unified Church had sympathizers in the Sawtooth police department, Zook had vouched for Ireland, the sheriff of Payette County.
"If it was up to him, he would have run the Unified Church off a long time ago," he said. "The guy's ex-Green Beret, served something like three tours in Vietnam. All sorts of medals. I once talked to him about what he thought of these Aryans who had just bought the place. He wasn't too happy about it, said that a lot of the guys he fought beside and bled with were black and Hispanic. He had always been known as a good judge of character. After that, all the rest to him was mere cosmetics."
When Ireland first met with Zook and Marlene, he'd listened to their plan and began to laugh. "So you're suggesting that I deputize an Indian police chief who's a thousand miles out of his jurisdiction and a Vietnamese…well, whatever he is that you're not saying, but I take it he isn't your typical Asian gentleman. And that with my little crew, we take on fifty or sixty armed Nazis, so that you and a bunch of ivory-towered theorists can dig up a car and a murder victim…maybe."
"That's about it in a nutshell," Marlene agreed.
Ireland looked at Zook, who nodded his head. The sheriff laughed again. "I like it. When do we get started?"
After Lucy, Jojola, Tran, and Ned arrived, they'd all met at O'Toole's house instead of the sheriff's office to avoid raising eyebrows and starting tongues wagging. By consensus, they'd agreed that Ireland would be the tactical commander of the security team.
"Colonel Steve Ireland was a legend in 'Nam, even for some of us who also spent a lot of time out in the bush, hunting guys in pajamas like this old fart," Jojola said, hooking a thumb at Tran.
"I will ignore your insults, as my people were building stone temples and delving into the arts and sciences, when yours were living in mud huts and howling at the moon," Tran said. "However, I concur with my esteemed comrade's assessment: Ireland was feared, a ferocious warrior, who some of my men thought could not be killed."
Ireland had brought with him U.S. Geological Survey topographical maps, which he laid out on the dining room table. Pulling a sausage-sized Mancuso cigar out of a side pocket of his camouflage pants, he bit off the end and was about to light it when he looked at Mikey O'Toole. "Sorry, do you mind?" he asked, holding up the cigar.
"Nah, I imbibe every once in a while myself," O'Toole replied. "I was just saying good-bye. I have to drive to Boise to start preparing for the trial with my lawyers. Good luck."
Ireland was soon puffing away as he leaned over the maps from one end so that the others could see from the other. "First thing, we're not going to beat these guys with overwhelming firepower. We've been keeping tabs on the Unified Church, and I'd estimate there's anywhere from forty to fifty of those idiots running around in there. I'd be willing to bet that ninety percent have never been in a firefight and will head for the hills as soon as things get real. But there may be ex-military, and some of these guys we've run into lately for regular crimes like assault and robbery have obviously had some training and are pretty aggressive. They're pretty well armed, too. The main compound and firing range is back five miles from the highway and we've had a tough time getting anyone inside. But we've listened in a time or two from nearby hills, and they've got automatic weapons and what sounds like fifty-cal machine guns."
Ireland began stabbing spots on the map with a meaty finger. "Gatehouse, two guys, usually the numbskulls who fucked up-nothing like putting your best guys out as your early warning system. Guard tower, right where the main road splits-one goes to the compound, right here, the other to the gravel pit, a couple of clicks down that road."
"You've done your homework," Marlene remarked.
Ireland blew a smoke ring up at the rafters. "I've been figuring since day one that we'd eventually have to take these jokers down," he said. "Of course, I thought I might get a little help from the feds. Anybody want to tell me why we're not calling them in?"
Nobody spoke. The big sheriff snorted smoke out of his nose and nodded. "Okay, I don't like dealing with those guys anyway."
Ireland looked back down at the map and drew a rough circle with a black felt-tip pen. "Main compound. Three barracks. Some office buildings. And the private residence of the Reverend Benjamin "Benji" Hamm, the grand pooh-bah of this particular band of morons. Place is surrounded by a twelve-foot chain-link fence topped by razor wire. Another guard post here…and here-unknown how many guys are on duty at night, we'll assume at least two."
Pointing back at the barracks, Ireland said, "The one guy we ever got inside said the barracks were made of reinforced concrete, which will take a pretty direct hit from more than I've even got. But if plan A doesn't work, and we have to go to plan B, our job will be to keep them pinned up inside, not try to take them."
"What's the matter, Caveman, are you a cave chicken?" Marlene joked. She and Ireland had been butting heads since they'd met. He was hopelessly chauvinistic and didn't want her involved in case "things get hairy," until Zook took him aside one day and apparently told him what he knew of some of Marlene's exploits against terrorists. The man had continued giving her a hard time, but it evolved into the sort of guff one soldier gives to another. And she'd given as good as she got.
Gagging on a cloud of blue smoke, Ireland chuckled as he wiped his eyes. "Damn, I got to love your moxie, Marlene. Next thing you know, she'll have us going after Osama himself."
Marlene smiled. "That's not a bad idea. Think you could do it?"
Ireland sucked on the end of the cigar and squinted at her through the cloud. "Maybe, with the right men and a plan," he said. "But I don't need to…my boys in Special Forces are hunting that little prick right now. It might be a month, it might be five years, but they're patient…they'll run him to the ground until he wakes up in his cave some morning with a knife at his throat."
He poked the map. "For the moment, we got plenty to worry about right here. I've got about a half dozen deputies and a pretty good four-man SWAT team I trained myself. With Jojola and Tran, especially if they can pull off plan A, we might be able to keep most of these guys occupied. But I'm worried about your security at the gravel pit, just in case some of these jokers bust out through our perimeter or you run into a patrol. These guys like to play army and maybe they're smart enough to keep some people out in the field."
"Well, I have an idea about where to find more men," Marlene said. But when she said what she was thinking, Ireland shook his head. "We have enough amateurs to babysit. And anybody that's personally involved is a potentially loose cannon."
Marlene dropped it for the time. But after the strategy meeting broke up and the others were off talking, Marlene and Zook took Ireland aside so that she could make her case again. "I know he's had some military training, and I'm betting a few of the others do, too," she said. "And these guys spend their lives walking around in the mountains and won't be tripping all over themselves."