Ashes (19 page)

“Thank you, but I don’t think there’s much you can do.”

“Why not?” He didn’t answer, just began walking down the docks toward the gate. “Look, what is your problem?” she asked as she walked beside him. “So I found out something you didn’t want me to know, big deal. The important thing is —”

“Is that I know who you are,” he said, cutting off her words. He stopped walking, turned to face her. “Yeah, I know who you are and why you’re here. You’re just visiting until you can get your head together and go back home, Miss California. You don’t know anything about me or Matthew or anybody else here. And I am glad that you’re concerned, but really, it’s not your business, OK? Thanks for the coffee.” He turned and walked up the docks, and she watched him go. What cut her most deeply was not anything he’d said but the look she’d read in his eyes.
I found out something
you
didn’t want
me
to know. How’s it feel, Miss California? How does it feel?

Jennifer walked along the docks, her gait stiff. She kept her face up to the wind and blinked more often than necessary, telling herself that she would not cry, not until she was in the safety of her car, would not, damn it.

She made it. Just.

S
ean arrived at the lodge a little after six. It was one of those deeply cold, clear mornings when the very air seemed frozen, would sear your throat if you breathed too quickly or too deeply. His van’s heater was balky at the best of times, and his breath steamed, his bad knee ached. Most likely his coffee and breakfast sandwich were stone cold by now; he had an instant’s longing for Florida in January, for warmth and for pretty girls in sundresses. As he drove into the lodge’s parking lot, he put that longing away into a box and locked it. He parked, got out of the van, checked his watch. Five after six. Not too early, not too late.

He needn’t have worried about punctuality. When he walked into the lodge — blessed warmth! — the only two there were Richard Blaine and Doug MacReady. They waved to him, he waved back. They were sitting in the lodge’s main foyer, by the fireplace. A large, low table in front of them held several thermoses of coffee and a large plate of muffins.

“Hi, Sam,” said MacReady. “Oh, I should have told you not to bring that swill.” He waved at the coffee table. “Breakfast compliments of Richard’s wife.”

“And there’s a cooler full of sandwiches out in my truck,” said Blaine. “Chicken, roast beef and I think egg salad.”

Sean tossed his cold coffee and Egg McMuffin into a nearby trashcan. No matter if these muffins were like rocks, he’d eat them. He had a cast-iron stomach, which had come in handy many times over the years. “Glad I didn’t pack a lunch.”

“With Anna around, you don’t have to,” MacReady said. “She’s the best cook in the county. Right, Richard?”

Blaine simultaneously bowed his head humbly and grinned with pride. “We’ll let Sam be the judge of that.”

Sean sat down and poured some coffee and took one of the muffins. The coffee was just the way he liked it, hot and strong. He took a bite of the muffin — real blueberries, my God — and realized with a pang that this was the first decent food he’d had since visiting Robert last year. “Doug, you’re full of shit.”

“Oh?” MacReady seemed to be bristling at the suggestion that Anna’s cooking might not be all he said it was, but Blaine gave Sean a sly smile.

“She’s the best cook in the
state.
”

“See, Doug, I told you to trust your instincts,” Blaine said with a chuckle. “Oh, more arrivals.”

The men began arriving and soon were drinking coffee, laughing, and making happy noises over the muffins. They were all men Sean had seen at the New Year’s meeting, and he had the impression that this was the most trusted circle. He felt a moment’s triumph that he deliberately repressed; he was too new, too unknown to be admitted to the inner circle so easily. Something else was going on.

The last ones finally showed up, two men, both tall and skinny, clearly brothers. “Sorry we’re late,” said the one who was losing his hair.

“Battery needed a jump,” added the one with the mustache and the beady eyes.

“Not a problem,” said Blaine. “Boys, we have a new arrival. Sam Lewis, meet the Wickersham brothers. Steve and Eddie.”

Eddie (the balding one) reached out and shook his hand, offered a “Pleased to meet you.” Steve shook his hand but said nothing, gave a slight nod. Sean noticed that Steve looked at him a beat longer than necessary; he ratcheted up his caution a notch.

Introductions made, pleasantries exchanged, the coffee and muffins consumed, the group made its way outside. Blaine casually said, “Steve and Eddie, you take the north stand. Doug, you and Walt take the south one. I’ll take the east one — Sam, why don’t you stick with me?”

“Sounds good,” he replied.

“Jess and Irwin, you take west unless you want to trade with the others.”

The group split up into their assigned directions. Sean and Blaine walked, and for a long time neither said anything. The sounds of the other hunters had died away and it was just the crunch of their boots on snow, the sound of their breathing. Sean let Blaine lead the way, let him set the pace, which was a good one. A few puffy clouds hung in the sky now, and from time to time they hid the sun. After the brilliance of sunlight on snow, the shade seemed darker than it should have, seemed to leach the color out of the world.

There was a clearing in the woods, on the side of a hill, and Blaine stopped. On the other side of the clearing Sean could see a tree stand. “Let’s rest for a bit. I don’t know about you, but I definitely need to quit smoking,” Blaine said. “I’m getting winded.” Smoker he might be, but Blaine did not sound the slightest bit winded.

“Works for me,” Sean replied.

“Nice rifle, by the way,” Blaine said. “Where’d you get it?”

“A friend gave it to me.”

There was a large fir tree, its trunk nearly two feet wide, and they both leaned against it, both pretending to rest. It occurred to Sean that if assassination was what he was after, he could do it right now. That was precisely what troubled him. Was it likely for him to get into the inner circle so soon? To be alone with Blaine before he was tested, proven trustworthy? From down the halls of memory, one of his first missions, he heard Robert saying,
If something seems too good to be true, watch out, because it probably is.

No probably about it. It might look as if he was alone with Blaine, but he wasn’t. He would bet his life —
was
betting his life, actually — that a few of the others were nearby. Hell, the stand assignments were probably a ruse. Blaine probably had the whole route they’d taken mapped out, had men stationed along it so he and Blaine were never out of sight. It made perfect sense. Blaine had his most trusted men here, men he could rely on to shoot straight and well should Blaine give the signal. Men who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut.

All it would take was one false move on Sean’s part or saying the wrong thing. Or not even that. Maybe just Blaine deciding that this was not a risk worth taking. Somewhere out of sight, men waited with their fingers on triggers, waited for Blaine’s signal, and he wouldn’t even hear the bullet that took him out. He had no protection: thinking they might frisk him, he’d left the vest and his pistol at his apartment. Apart from the rifle, the most deadly thing on him was his Swiss Army knife. All they had to do was dump him in the woods somewhere, let him be found and written off as a hunting accident, too bad.

Sean felt no fear. That was an emotion for later, when he could safely let his guard down. He’d lost count of the times that he had kept the fear at bay, only to have the shakes begin as soon as he was behind the door of the safe house. He took a cigarette out of his pack; his fingers were steady. “Would you like one?” he asked. Voice calm and steady, the voice of a man offering a friend a smoke.

“No, thanks, not now.” Blaine waited until Sean's cigarette was lit, then said, “Doug told me about some of the things you’ve said at the meetings. He liked them, and so do I. You think the way we do. You can see how things are going in this country. We’ve gotten so far away from ourselves...” Blaine shook his head sadly. “I sometimes think, if I have children, I wonder if when they’re my age, their America will be one we’d even recognize.”

“I see what you mean,” Sean replied. “And I’m glad you like what I’ve said. But I think the time for saying things is over. Maybe the time has come for doing things.”

He looked Blaine in the eyes. Here, now, was the gamble. Blaine looked back at him, and in his gaze was the warmth of the idealist and the coldness of a man who had ordered the deaths of several hundred people. “Yes, I think that time has come. Because make no mistake, Sam. The battle lines have been drawn. Waco. Ruby Ridge. Oklahoma City. Los Angeles.” Blaine paused, waited for a reaction.

Sean gave back nothing but a nod, a pleased gleam in his eye.

Apparently the response was, for now, acceptable. “I have to know if I can count on you to do your work for the cause,” Blaine said. “That work may seem very trivial at times. Or it can call for action that seems terrible.”

“As in any war,” Sean said.

“You understand then,” Blaine said. “That this is a war.”

“Yes.”

“And you are committed to fighting this war?”

“Yes.” Sean knew that if he answered otherwise, he would not leave these woods alive.

Blaine nodded, then extended his hand. This was the part that always bothered Sean, the handshake, though it was inevitable. From his earliest years he had been raised to believe a handshake was a powerful thing, an almost sacred promise of trust. Scout’s honor and all that. He had broken the trust formed by a handshake thousands of times, yet it never failed to send a faint twinge of remorse through him. But he let none of this show, merely took the offered hand.

“I think I’ll take that smoke now, Sam,” Blaine said.

As he held the lighter out for Blaine, the sun came out from behind a cloud and lit up the clearing, dazzling light winking back from the snow and ice, making the lighter’s small point of flame nearly invisible.

He saw it. In a winter-dead bush, something else reflecting back at him. Light winking off the glass of a rifle scope.

The cigarette lit, Blaine took a step away from him. Sean’s experienced eye saw the scope move slightly, tracking not him, but Blaine.

No altruism in his next action.
Oh no you don’t, rat bastard. He’s mine.

“So —” Blaine began.

He lunged toward Blaine, pulled him to the ground. They both heard the whiz of the bullet and the thunk as it hit the tree. As they hit the ground, a chunk of wood from the tree landed in front of their noses.

“What the hell —”

“Shhh. Stay down,” he hissed at Blaine, who needed no prompting.

From the woods a confusion of noises. A babble of voices, two more shots, a yell of pain. The rattle and rustle of bushes, the crunch of boots on snow. Above the general din, a voice Sean already recognized as Steve Wickersham’s yelling, “
Now,
cocksucker!”

They waited. Blaine looked alert; there was fear in his eyes but nothing close to panic.

MacReady’s voice: “All clear, guys. We’ve got him.”

They both got to their feet. Blaine paused a moment to brush snow off his jacket; if he was shaken from nearly getting killed, he gave no sign. They walked to the other side of the clearing. There, on his knees with his hands on top of his head, was a man dressed in winter camouflage. His right leg bled from a bullet wound, one side of his face was swollen and discolored, probably from a blow with a rifle butt. MacReady stood in front of the kneeling man, looking at him with a pensive, almost grave expression. Steve Wickersham stood behind the prisoner, the muzzle of his rifle against the camouflaged man’s head; Steve had a dancing light in his eyes, and for the first time today he looked happy. Sean wondered if Steve would bother waiting for Blaine’s order before pulling the trigger. Eddie Wickersham leaned against a tree nearby, looking pale but steady.

Glancing around the clearing, Sean saw that the rest of the group had come out of the woodwork. Well, they’d caught an assassin today; just not the one they’d been watching.

“Well, isn’t this something,” Blaine said, a teasing note in his voice. He might have been in a local tavern celebrating a Packers victory instead of in the woods, facing a man who had just tried to kill him. “Didn’t expect to find you here, Carl. Small world, as they say. Oh, allow me to make introductions. It’s only fair Sam here knows who you are, since you might have killed him as well as me.”

“I doubt it,” Carl said. “I don’t miss.”

“Then how come I’m walking and talking? Sam, this is Carl Miller. He’s a higher-up with the Wisconsin Patriots, one of our finer militias. Also runs a very profitable black market ring for automatic weapons and such things, don’t you, Carl?”

“You should know,” Carl replied. “You bought from me often enough.”

“And you gypped me often enough, which is why I no longer do business with you.” The amusement left Blaine’s eyes, replaced by a cold practicality. Sean recognized that look, having seen it very often during his career. Having seen it in his own eyes, in the mirror.

“Walt, Jess, see what else he’s got on him. Steve, step back a few. Carl’s not going anywhere,” Blaine said.

Walt and Jess stepped over and frisked Carl Miller. They found a very good knife and a 10-millimeter automatic that was nothing special. They handed these, along with Miller’s rifle, to Blaine, who looked the goods over, nodded. Blaine kept the knife, gave the guns to MacReady, saying, “We’ll add those to the general fund.”

“Sure thing,” MacReady said, nodding.

“Now then,” Blaine said, taking a step closer to Carl Miller. “Why?”

“Because ever since last March things have been going in the tank, that’s why!” Miller snapped. “After you assholes did that building in Los Angeles —”

“Bullshit, Carl, they blamed the Arabs for that. Suits me fine, those creeps get what they deserve.”