The Ranch had put its focus on the Patriots six months after the Oklahoma bombing when the FBI, the aTF., the DBA, and the rest of the alphabet soup failed to agree on how to combat domestic terrorism. The President had grown tired of the infighting and pulled the entire problem away from all of them without them even knowing it had been pulled away. As the agencies still were working on a joint task force, the Ranch had been given a highly classified presidential directive. It was covered by Section 180102 of the Omnibus Crime Bill which allowed “Multi jurisdictional Task Forces” to be funded by “assets seized as a result of investigations.”
As far as Lake knew, the Ranch had been in existence for a long time before the problem of the Patriots or Militias, or whatever they wanted to call themselves, had arisen. Over half a century at least as Lake had heard references to competition with the OSS, Office of Strategic Services, during World War II for personnel. The OSS, and its follow-on, the CIA, had been the public front. The Ranch was the hidden part. Perhaps the Ranch had once been part of the OSS, if Feliks’s cigarette case was to be believed as being his, and then had split off sometime during World War II.
Lake found it amazing that it never really occurred to Congress, or the general public for that matter, that there simply had to be a covert government agency that no one had ever heard of, that conducted missions that could not be done by an organization open to public or congressional scrutiny. The CIA, no matter how covert its covert wing tried to operate, was known to the public and that meant that conflicting priorities and a lack of secrecy were built into the organization. It was only natural when the President ran out of other options that he picked the Ranch to delve into the problems of the right-wingers. The Ranch was where the buck always stopped.
Feliks was the leader of the Ranch. Had been ever since Lake had been hand-picked to join it five years ago. From what Lake could gather whenever he went to the Ranch, Feliks had been in charge for decades. Lake actually had no idea of the extent of the organization or how many people worked for it, such was the extent of the compartmentalization that Feliks imposed. In fact, Lake wondered if Feliks truly was the head of the organization. For all he knew, Feliks was just a section chief, although the man never seemed to have to defer his decision making to anyone else.
Lake had never met any of the other field operatives. Whenever he went back to the Ranch, located outside Las Vegas at a secret Air Force base that had been used for such things as testing the Stealth Fighter and other classified aircraft, he dealt only with Feliks or support personnel. His training had always been one^ on-one with the instructors, all of whom were the best in their specialties.
Lake had been well-qualified in the field of special operations before being recruited and, with the Ranch training, he knew he was among the best in the world. But as events just a few nights ago had proven, even the best could get killed when things didn’t quite work like they should. James Bond looked very good on the screen, but one thing Lake knew was that real life was full of screw-ups and human foibles! Training didn’t make him perfect but it did give him a leg up on other, less well-trained personnel.
Beyond the organizational security, there was a level of personal security that was extremely strict, for two reasons, one obvious, the other not so obvious. The first reason was to allow operatives to go deep undercover, something that was essential for the work to be done. On this operation, Lake had now been under for sixteen months, which was unheard of in law enforcement or even intelligence circles inside the United States. The reason it was unheard of was not only the psychological strain on the undercover person, but the fact that anyone under that long on the wrong side of the law in the States had to end up breaking the law in order for the cover to remain valid.
And Lake did break the law. That was the second reason for the tight security because, even with the presidential directive reference the Patriots, the Ranch operatives were committing crimes up to, and including, murder. Taking out the three men the other night wasn’t the only law Lake had broken. He broke the law every time he sold illegal automatic weapons and ordnance. But it was because he sold that gear and broke the law that criminals like Jonas trusted him as much as they were able to trust anyone they hadn’t grown up with.
Lake knew he had added three counts of murder to his list of felonies the previous evening, although he supposed a lawyer could make a good case for self-defense and a high degree of justification for action. Still, he hadn’t read anyone their rights or given them the option of surrender.
That thought made Lake smile, the gesture lost in the darkness of the booth. Lake wasn’t a cop. Never had been. That wasn’t what Feliks looked for at the Ranch. People in power were scared, and when people were scared they went for the best. And the Ranch always got the pick of the crop, even when people weren’t scared.
Lake knew another fertilizer bomb wasn’t what scared the piss out of everyone from the President on down. Something like the biological agent Lake had just stopped on the Golden Gate was the real fear. The amount of fissionable material floating out of the former Soviet Union was an other source of fear. The potential for a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon of mass destruction being unleashed was no longer a question of if, but more one of when.
And that “when” occurred about every five or six months. So far the Ranch operatives had a perfect record against the Patriots and other terrorist organizations, covering four different attempts at domestic terrorism. Five, Lake reminded himself, after the events of the previous evening. Of course only Feliks and the President knew that.
“Can you get me a Hush Puppy?” Lake finally asked as Jonas’s story wound to a close somewhere in the jungles north of the DMZ in Vietnam, over thirty years ago.
“You don’t get a Hush Puppy to use,” Jonas said. “It’s a fucking piece of history. A goddamn classic.”
Lake’s expertise was weapons, but he didn’t look at them as stamps to be collected like many people did. They were tools. A great violinist didn’t buy a Stradivarius to hang it on the wall in a glass case and be looked at. He bought it to play it. Lake needed a new instrument. The .22 High Standard bullets had bounced off the man in the boat’s vest. The Ranch ordnance department had provided the High Standard and Lake had used it. Lake allowed himself only one mistake and he wouldn’t use it again. The only advantage the gun had was it could be fired repeatedly without re cocking unusual in a silenced semiautomatic weapon. In the future, Lake simply wanted one bullet that would do the job instead of two that wouldn’t.
A Hush Puppy was a Smith & Wesson Model 99, 9mm automatic pistol specially modified with a silencer. Because of the modifications, h had been officially designated the Mark 22 Mod O pistol with a Mark 3 Mod O silencer attached to the barrel. The gun had been developed during the Vietnam War for use by the Navy SEALs. The stated purpose was to kill enemy sentry dogs, thus the nickname. The next time Lake shot someone with a silenced weapon, he wanted a bigger bullet. One that could cut through a vest if the round was specially modified, and Lake knew how to modify bullets.
There were drawbacks to the Hush Puppy. It had a lock on the slide, to keep the slide locked closed when it was fired. This prevented metal on metal noise. But it also prevented the gun from ejecting the spent round and chambering a new one, unlike the operation of the High Standard. The Hush Puppy had to be manually unlocked and a new round chambered each time it was fired. That could take a trained man almost a second, a very long time when bullets were flying.
The Mark 3 silencer consisted of a hollow tube screwed on the end of the barrel. Inside the tube was a disposable insert that suppressed sound. The insert was a cylinder holding four quarter-inch-thick plastic disks with a small hole in the center. The disks slowed down the escaping gasses which in guns makes most of the noise of firing. Each insert was good for two dozen rounds. Combining the Mark 3 with specially developed subsonic ammunition and the slide lock, the gun was practically noiseless.