24 Declassified: 10 - Head Shot Read online

  An open space about twenty yards wide stretched from the backs of all the buildings in an arc to the foot of the jumbled sandstone formations. It was bordered by an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire. The fence extended in both directions, north and south, enclosing the western edge of the oval before curving eastward on both sides to complete the encirclement of the rest of the space.

  Jack said, “The compound is completely fenced in?”

  Neal, at his shoulder, said, “Yes.”

  Jack gestured with the flashlight so its beam played across the jagged rock rim beyond the fence. “Any roads back there?”

  “A couple of game trails, maybe. Nothing you could get a vehicle through, not even a dirt bike.”

  “So the front gate’s the only way in or out?”

  “I suppose there’s places along the fence line that could be hopped, if you were determined and athletic enough. But whoever did it would be walking, not riding. And they’d be in for a hell of a hike. Why?”

  “No particular reason, just trying to get the lay of the land.”

  Jack turned, starting back the way he came, Neal falling into step behind him. Neal said, “The Zealots didn’t troop out of here on foot, if that’s what you’re thinking. We know how they left.”

  Jack said, “How?”

  “They’ve got an old school bus that they use to get around in. They’re always driving in a group to the county seat or down into Denver or wherever to hold protest demonstrations or stage media events. Prewitt’s big on that. A natural- born pest. The bus is painted blue, kind of a trademark so people’ll know they’re coming. They keep it in a garage up here and it’s not there now, so we figure that’s how they left the scene.”

  “A blue bus, eh? Sounds like it’d be hard to hide.”

  Neal said grimly, “You’d think so.”

  They went to the front of the building and went inside into a long, narrow hall. It ran straight through the building from front to back. There were four rooms on the first floor, two on either side of the hall. A staircase led up to the second floor.

  The front room on the right was a kind of communications center. That was the room where the window was broken from the inside out. Not much seemed disturbed, apart from that. A floor lamp was knocked over and lay on its side. A mass of moths flew in circles under an overhead light. A couple of workstations were placed around the space, complete with computers, phone banks, printers, fax machines, and the like. A Styrofoam cup of coffee stood on one of the desks. It gave the impression that the desk’s occupant had just stepped away for a minute, except that the cream in the coffee had curdled and the cup’s contents were a gray- brown sludge.

  Each workstation featured a hardcover book in a prominent position. They were all the same book. Jack picked one up and examined it. The title was: Whip Them with Scorpions. It was subtitled, driving the Money-Changers from the Temple.

  It was a very thick book, a real doorstopper, with lots of fine print and charts and graphs but no pictures. Its author was Abelson Prewitt. The back cover displayed a black-and-white photo of Prewitt. A big, double-domed cranium topped a long, bony face. A few thin strands of black hair were plastered across his oversized skull. Dark, intent eyes glared behind thick-lensed black glasses. Thin lips were tightly compressed.

  Neal said dryly, “His magnum opus. Ever read it?”

  Jack said, “I’m waiting for the movie. You?”

  “Part of it. I got farther through it than anybody else in my outfit. That’s what makes me the expert.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Let me put it this way: if you think people have some cracked ideas about sex—which they do— that’s nothing compared to some of the crazy notions out there about economics.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Prewitt’s like most philosophers cracked or sane, if there are any of the latter. He comes up with a theory that he claims explains why everything works the way it does better than the theories of all the other thinkers who’ve done the same thing. They’re all just chasing their tails around, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Jack said, “That makes you a philosopher, too.” The book was heavy. Jack set it down. He said, “I take it there’s no love lost between Prewitt and the Round Table?”

  Neal said, “You can take that to the bank. No, better not. Prewitt’s not too happy with the banking system, either.”

  The left front room was a kind of day room. There was a fireplace, a sofa, and a couple of armchairs. The mantle over the fireplace was lined with books, every one of them a copy of Whip Them with Scorpions. A card table with three opened folding chairs grouped around it stood in a corner. The fourth chair stuck half in and half out of the frame of a big-screen TV it had been pitched through.

  The left back room was a storeroom for the cult’s publications. One wall had a floor- to-ceiling bookshelf devoted solely to copies of Prewitt’s masterwork. Tables were stacked with copies of Zealot newsletters and pamphlets. The subjects reflected such topics as the iniquity of the Federal Reserve banking system, the necessity of returning to the gold standard, the Wall Street/Washington, D.C. plot to repeal the Constitution and turn the United States into a slave state, and various world- historical conspiracies by the Illuminati and Freemasonry to rule the world.

  The right back room was a combination kitchen and dining room area.

  The second floor was reserved for a double set of private living quarters. Neal said, “It’s split in two. One half is Prewitt’s, the other belongs to Ingrid Thaler, his second- in-command.”

  Prewitt’s rooms were stark, spare, ascetic, almost monklike in their spartan simplicity. There was a copy of his book on the bedside night table, another on his writing desk and a third on a small bookshelf that also contained copies of Plato’s Republic, the Bible, a complete edition of Shakespeare’s works, a dictionary and thesaurus.

  Ingrid Thaler’s suite was tastefully decorated, handsomely appointed, and expensively furnished. She certainly didn’t lack for any of the creature comforts. One room was filled with nothing but her clothes, shoes, and accessories. The suite was bare of any copies of Prewitt’s book. Her boudoir— you couldn’t call it a bedroom, it was too luxurious for that—featured a photograph in a silver frame prominently displayed on top of a dresser cabinet. It depicted a glamorous woman in her forties with an upswept blond hairstyle, cool level eyes, a sensuous mouth, and a lot of strong jaw and determined chin.

  Jack said, “Is that her?”

  Neal nodded. “That’s Madame Thaler.”

  “She doesn’t like herself too much, keeping a framed photo of herself on the bureau. Is she Prewitt’s mistress?”

  Neal shrugged. “Nobody knows. That’s one of the cult’s best-kept secrets. But it’s no secret that she’s his lieutenant, his enforcer, chief executive officer, number two in the hierarchy. She sees that the great man’s word becomes law among his followers. The compound is for the Zealots’ leadership cadre, their inner circle. The outer circle, the rank and file, live in their own private homes. There’s hundreds of them, a large part of whom live in this state.”

  Jack said, “So there’s a good potential depth of backfield on short notice if Prewitt needs to call them up.”

  “Yes.”

  “Great.”

  Nothing in the upstairs living quarters showed any signs of violence, chaos, or disorder. It was as if their owners had just stepped out for a minute.

  Jack and Neal went downstairs and outside, standing on the front porch. Neal got out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

  Jack said, “No, thanks.”

  Neal shook loose a cigarette and lit up. He said after a pause, “Anything about the scene speak to you?”

  Jack shook his head. “Nothing yet. Weird. Maybe they had some kind of palace coup or something.”

  Neal said, “That’s as good a theory as any. But where did they all go? And why?”

  The admin
building was bracketed by a pair of identical one-story, cabin-style structures. Neal indicated first the one on the south, then the one to the north. “That’s the men’s barracks, the other’s the women’s barracks. Prewitt doesn’t just have some funny ideas about economics, he’s got some about sex, too.”

  Jack said, “Do tell.”

  “To be in the leadership cadre at Red Notch, you’ve got to dissolve all previous relationships. A married couple can’t stay married, at least not to each other. The men bunk in one barracks, the women in another. From time to time Prewitt, or more precisely Ingrid, pairs up a couple to, as they put up, gratify their natural physical urges. There’s a couple of smaller bungalow units for their conjugal visitations. That’s usually a reward for some meritorious service to the cult. They keep juggling the partners around to keep any permanent relationships from forming. The only permanent relationship that’s allowed is to the cause of Zealotry.”

  “No children in the compound?”

  “No, they’re too smart for that. With all that partner-swapping going on, they won’t risk any charges like child endangerment or contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Prewitt’s done time on a tax rap once; since then, he’s been damned careful not to give the law any cause to go poking around in the compound.”

  Jack said, “Until now, on the eve of the Round Table.”

  Neal said, “Even then, there’s not much to go on. The Zealots are free to come and go as they please, there’s no law against that. The broken glass and bloodstains and bullet holes are suspicious, but a good lawyer could probably explain them away. Especially with the Zealots cooperating in the cover-up. They could always claim a party got out of hand or somebody had a shooting accident or something. Luckily the Sky Mount conference gives us a loophole to go poking around on national security grounds.”

  Neal finished his cigarette. He stubbed it out and put the butt in his jacket pocket, explaining, “Force of habit. Even though the criminalistics crew has been over the site, I can’t bring myself to litter the scene.”

  Jack said, “You mentioned bullet holes. You mean the light shot out here?”

  Neal said, “There’s some more at the men’s barracks. Looks like they had a pretty good brawl over there. Want to take a look?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jack and Neal went down the stairs to ground level and started toward the barracks. Jack glanced back over his shoulder at the admin building, all ablaze with electric lights. He said, “I feel funny about not shutting off the lights.”

  Neal said, “When we’re done here I’ll shut off the generator. That’ll kill all the lights. Personally I’m happy with as much light as we can get.”

  “You’ve got a point there.”

  The men’s barracks was a large single room shoebox-shaped cabin with whitewashed wooden walls and a peaked shingled roof. It fronted east, like all the buildings in the compound, as if they were deliberately turning their backs on the alien other-worldliness of the sandstone piles. Its long axis was east-west, so that its short side faced front.

  The upper half of the front door consisted of four framed glass panes; they were all broken. A horizontal line of a half-dozen bullet holes pierced the wall to the left of the door below the window cell. On the right side, one of the windowpanes displayed a bullet hole with a corona of spidery cracks. Jack said, “Some party.”

  He and Neal went inside. An open central aisle was flanked on either side by rows of double-decker bunk beds set at right angles to the center space. Gray metal wardrobe cabinets like gym lockers stood against the far walls between the bunk beds. The floor was uncarpeted wood.

  There were bloodstains on the floor and some of the mattresses. A couple of the bunk beds were askew and some of the walls were pocked with bullet holes. Neal said, “Yeah, some party.”

  He and Jack went back outside. Some bats flitted out from under the eaves, whirling and pinwheeling aloft in seemingly random, zigzag patterns. Jack’s hand was under his coat, touching the butt of the gun holstered under his arm. Neal saw it and grinned. Jack grinned, too, a bit sheepishly, bringing his hand out empty and letting it fall to his side.

  Neal pointed out the next buildings south of the barracks. “The near one’s the mess hall and the barn next to it is the garage where they kept the blue bus.”

  They started toward the mess hall. Neal said, “Here’s where the Zealots get their chow. Not Prewitt and Ingrid, though. They’ve got a private chef to rustle up their meals in the kitchen in the admin building.”

  Jack said, “Rank has its privileges.”

  The mess hall was a shedlike structure whose long side fronted east. Jack and Neal were closing on it when rattling sounded in back of the building.

  The two men froze. Silence reigned for a few heartbeats, only to be broken by a soft metal clangor. Jack whispered, “Don’t tell me that was bats.”

  Furtive rustling and rattling sounds came from behind the mess hall. Jack’s semi-automatic pistol, a 9mm Beretta, was in his hand; he didn’t even remember drawing it. Neal’s gun was drawn, too, a .357 magnum revolver with a shiny metal finish. He said, low- voiced, “It could be a bear.”

  Jack’s face must have reflected his scepticism . Neal said, “No kidding, the mountains are overrun with black and brown bears. Hunts have been curtailed for years because of environmental politics, and the bear population is out of control. Familiarity breeds contempt, and they’re not afraid of men.”

  Jack said, “Let’s find out. I’ll go the long way around the mess hall, so give me a minute to get in place. If it’s a man, we’ll take him.”

  Neal said, “I hope it’s a man. If it’s a bear, for God’s sake don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to, if he’s charging you. Fire some warning shots, maybe that’ll scare him off. Believe me, with all the red tape and paperwork involved, it’s less hassle to shoot a man than a bear.”

  Jack grunted, an acknowledgment that he’d heard what the other had said but that committed him to nothing. He peeled off from Neal, light-footing it at quick time south along the front of the mess hall, down to the southeast corner. Neal rounded the northeast corner, vanishing from sight.

  Jack edged along the short south face of the building, keeping close to the wall and crouching low to avoid the oblongs of yellow light shining out through the mess hall windows. More rattling sounded from behind the back of the building.

  Maybe it was a bear. Jack’s Beretta was armed with cartridges that were made up with a hot hand-loaded powder mix he had on special order. Each round was a potent man-stopper. Would it have the same effect on a charging bear? He’d hate to have to find out. He had no relish for reporting such an encounter to Ryan Chappelle.

  Jack halted at the southwest corner of the mess hall, back flat against the wall. He peeked around the corner.

  The back of the mess hall wasn’t as well-lit as the front. There were fewer windows to let the light shine through. The scarcity of electric light was compensated for by the moonlight. A concrete loading platform jutted out at the midpoint of the building’s rear. A Dumpster and a clump of garbage cans stood nearby. A stooped, shaggy figure stood swaying upright among the garbage cans, rummaging around inside them.

  Neal stepped out from behind the building’s north face into view, holding his gun levelled at the indistinct shape that stood reeling on two legs.

  Jack stepped into the open in the moonlight so Neal could see he was in position. Neal shouted, “Freeze!”

  The shape started, knocking over some garbage cans, stumbling over them, raising a racket as it tried to get clear of them. It fell, crawling on all fours. Jack and Neal closed in from both ends.

  The figure scrambled upright and started to run. It wasn’t a bear, it was a man. A shaggy man. Jack and Neal moved to intercept him.

  The shaggy man started across the open space toward the fence. Jack double-timed at a tangent to cross his path. The shaggy man’s hands were empty. If he had a weapon he hadn’t drawn it
.

  He was big, even running stooped forward as he was, big and thick- bodied. Jack neared him. The other looked like the last of the mountain men, with dark shoulder-length hair and a full beard. He was clumsy, unsteady on his feet.

  Jack ploughed into him sideways, slamming his right shoulder, upper arm, and elbow into the shaggy man’s left side, knocking him off balance. The shaggy man fell sprawling into the dirt, crying out in terror.

  He was still in the game. He rolled and got his legs under him, standing on his knees. His hand darted to his right side, drawing a knife worn there in a belt sheath. A hunting knife with a wickedly curved and gleaming eighteen-inch blade.

  Jack’s foot lashed out in a front snap kick to the shaggy man’s wrist, sending the knife flying from his hand.

  Neal came up behind him and laid his gun barrel behind the back of the shaggy man’s ear, rapping his skull hard enough to stun him but not so hard as to knock him out. The shaggy man fell forward face-first into the dirt.

  Neal’s mouth was open, he was breathing hard. Jack said, “Damned funny bears you grow out here!”

  Neal said, “That’s no bear and no Zealot, either. Who in the hell is he?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 A.M. AND 5 A.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME

  Red Notch, Colorado

  The shaggy man wore a flannel shirt, overalls, and work boots. He lay facedown in the dirt. Neal stood on one knee beside him, holding the muzzle of the .357 against the back of his skull. He said, “Keep still.”

  The other grunted something that could have been an affirmative. He remained motionless while Neal’s free hand gave him a pat-down frisk, searching him for weapons, finding none.

  Jack’s gun hand hung along his side. He held the knife that he’d picked up in his free hand. The ball of his foot still throbbed from where he’d delivered the front snap kick to disarm the shaggy man. The knife had deer antler plates inset in the grip, a hilt to keep the hand from slipping, and a long, sharp-pointed blade. He held it up to the moonlight, turning it so that moonbeams glimmered off the steel.