Bluetick Revenge (32 page)

Scott said, “Remember when I told your brother we could jump into the compound, and he made some comment about our corpses
landing in Iowa?”

“He has no sense of humor when it comes to skydiving,” I said.

“May is the ideal time for skydiving in northern Idaho,” he said. “Statistically, Idaho has less wind in May than in any other
month.”

“I think a small plane flying a few thousand feet over the compound on a sunny day would be pretty obvious,” I said. “They’d
shoot us before we landed.”

“I ain’t talking about a small plane,” Scott said. “I ain’t talking about daytime or a few thousand feet.”

I
HAD BROKEN MY SHARE
of rules. But usually they had been silly or unimportant rules. Staying in the girls’ dorm after midnight, bringing prescription
drugs over the border from Canada, things like that. Now we were considering conspiracy, kidnapping, and arson.

I had been taught that the end never justifies the means, but when I analyzed that statement, I began to question it. Wouldn’t
you have to weigh the two and decide each case on its own merits? In some cases might the end justify the means? It came down
to a choice between an absolute morality, in which certain acts were just wrong, and a utilitarian morality that required
weighing competing interests. True, society would deteriorate quickly if we could commit crimes without fear of legal consequences,
but were there cases in which it was desirable to teach someone a lesson and destroy his base of operations? If so, who gets
to decide?

These were the thoughts going through my mind as we sat in Scott’s “war room,” finalizing our plan. There were five of us:
Scott, Matt, Troy, me, and Troy’s friend Jeff Smart. Jeffis a pilot. He owns an air charter service called Smart Charter,
though we sometimes call it Get Smart. This was our third and final meeting.

“Now, the trick to making this work,” Scott said in conclusion, “is total surprise. We have to get in, do our work, and get
out without getting caught.

“Does anyone have any questions or concerns?” Scott asked. No response.

“Does anybody have any second thoughts?” I asked. “If any of us falter, we all go down. So if you’re having second thoughts,
now is the time to say so. Once Scott and I exit the aircraft, there’s no turning back.” Again, no response.

“All right,” Scott said, “see you in Idaho.”

I
HAD BEEN SKYDIVING BEFORE
, a few times in the Marines and a few times just for fun, but all my jumps had been low-altitude static-line jumps, the kind
where the parachute opens as soon as you exit from the aircraft. I had never experienced free fall.

Now I was in Jeff’s luxury business jet ten thousand feet above Idaho. It was dark, as it usually is at three a.m. Jeff was
flying the aircraft. Matt was there to help us with our gear and to close the door once we were out of the aircraft. It might
look funny if Jeff landed with the door wide open.

Scott and I were going to do a tandem dive because he felt that if we jumped separately we might land too far apart on the
ground and screw up the whole plan. My aura must have been the color of Grey Poupon.

We had done our homework. We had hiked four miles to the compound over pretty rough terrain to get an idea of the layout of
the buildings, the number of people around, and so forth. We had found a rock formation overlooking the compound about a half
mile from it. Using one of Scott’s telescopes, we had observed the compound and its inhabitants for a solid day, then hiked
back out during the evening.

Now I stood near the door of the jet. I looked at Scott and in that moment, more than any other, I saw the difference between
us. I was going to jump in spite of my fear; Scott was smiling.

I saw a flashing beam of light below, signaling the aircraft. Troy had purchased one of those two-million-candlepower lights
that you can plug into your car’s cigarette lighter. Then Jeff’s cell phone rang. “Here we go,” Jeff said.

“Not yet,” Scott said.

“We’re going to miss—”

I never got to finish my sentence. We were falling through the night at 120 miles per hour. I can’t describe the sheer terror
of it. My body tensed and I was not allowing myself to breathe. At times I lost track of my brother’s signal and the lights
of Coeur d’Alene. I had no idea how high we were, how close we were to the ground. We could have been ten feet from it and
I wouldn’t have known.

Then I heard a snap, felt a tug, and we were floating toward Earth. “Okay,” Scott said, “here we go.”

I saw the small lake that we had seen on the map. Then I saw the buildings. Most of the lights were out.

“Ten seconds,” Scott said. “Remember how to land.”

Then we were on the ground. No broken bones, all our equipment intact. We shed the parachute and harnesses, then put our face
masks on. “Put that shit over there,” Scott said as he pointed to some trees. “We want to take it with us when we leave.”
I picked up the chute and harnesses and carried them over to the spot Scott had indicated, then came back to him.

There were a number of structures. One was the main residence, a gigantic structure made of logs and stone. It looked like
a resort lodge. There were two smaller bunkhouses. There was a pavilion, which I assume was used for church services and hate
rallies. There was a barn used for storage of equipment, and another for horses.

“I’ll do the bunkhouses,” he said. “You do the main house, the pavilion, and the barn.”

“Not the horse barn,” I said.

“No, the other one, the one with the equipment. Keep a low profile. If one of us doesn’t find Skull in the chaos, we’ll meet
back over by those trees. Don’t set fire to all sides of the building; just douse one side. We want anyone who is in these
buildings to get out safely.”

I walked briskly to the main house. I had three one-quart plastic bottles filled with gasoline. I doused one side of the structure
with gasoline, then lit it. I ran to the barn and repeated the act, then did the same at the pavilion. I saw the sides of
bunkhouses in flame. I heard Scott’s firecrackers go off, so I lit mine and hid against the back side of the pavilion. It
was chaos, flames and noise everywhere.

People started coming out of the house and the bunkhouses. It looked as though five came out of the house, three out of one
bunkhouse, and two out of the other. A total of ten, all men. And the two German shepherds.

Skull was one of the three who emerged from the first bunkhouse. He was wearing the jean jacket with all the Aryan Resistance
garbage on it. His buddies seemed confused, but he appeared alert. He made the mistake of straying from his pals and began
to walk behind the bunkhouse. I knew that’s where Scott was, so I slipped over to our agreed-upon departure point near the
trees. The buildings were really burning now.

Skull’s mouth was a bloody mess, and I could only guess how Scott had hit him. Scott was carrying something in one arm that
was about the size and shape of a large briefcase. “Let’s go, motherfucker,” Scott said. He kicked Skull in the tailbone and
we headed into the forest. When we were a few hundred yards in, we tied his hands behind his back with plastic ties and gagged
him by-shoving a sock in his mouth and wrapping duct tape around his head.

“What’s that?” I asked Scott as I pointed to the metal object he had taken from the compound.

“I’ll explain later,” he said.

We had to hike downhill about four miles to make it to the road and Uncle Ray’s camper. Ray knew nothing about our operation,
but I had asked him to let me swap my truck for his camper for a week. Troy was driving the camper.

When we were within sight of the road, I didn’t see the camper. I dialed Troy on my cell phone, and when he answered I said,
“Flash your headlights for one second so we can see where you are. And don’t forget to put your mask on.”

He did, and that was all we needed. We walked a few hundred yards west, made sure there were no other vehicles approaching,
and shoved Skull into the back of the camper. We bound his legs together with duct tape, and blindfolded him.

Skull was lying on a bed in the camper. Despite having his limbs tied together, he struggled violently at times. At other
times he tried to be verbally abusive, though all we could hear was muffled noise because of the gag.

We decided to stay put for a few hours. Driving a camper at four in the morning might have attracted undue attention. We would
wait until sunrise to head out.

Troy started the camper a little before six and headed into town to buy some coffee at a convenience store. Then we headed
south, where we planned to catch the interstate and head down through Idaho, across Utah and Wyoming, and down into Colorado.

What to do with Skull was the subject of some debate. The consensus was, we had every right to kill him, but nobody was eager
to do the deed. I knew I couldn’t, and I suspected that even Scott was unwilling to go that far. The plan had been to beat
the crap out of him, but he looked so helpless now, I was even questioning that. That idea had appealed to me in the abstract,
but now that the opportunity had presented itself, I realized that it was more enjoyable to imagine hurting him than it would
be to actually do it. It wouldn’t bring my cousin back. It wouldn’t bring Steve Lowell back.

As we approached Boise, I removed the gag from Skull’s mouth. He was still blindfolded. “You’ve done a lot of evil shit in
your life,” I said, “and you’ve gotten away with it. Maybe there is a God who will make you answer for it, but maybe there
isn’t. Maybe it’s up to us.”

“I don’t have anything to answer for,” he said. “All I ever did was stand up for white people and the white race and the white
man’s way of life.”

“By killing a white cop?” I said.

“Cop was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

I resisted the temptation to smack him. Instead I yelled up front and told Troy to get off the interstate in Boise.

“What for?” Troy said.

“Boise’s a big city. I’m sure there’s a black part of town. We’ll dump Adolph here in the middle of the hood and give him
a chance to experience what it’s like to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, “I’m sure all that White Power shit will impress the homeboys.”

Eventually Troy found his way to what people usually refer to as “the bad part of town.” The houses were small, many in disrepair.
Unemployed black teens stared at us as we drove past. I’ll go out on a limb and say they probably had never seen a white bodybuilder
drive an old camper through their neighborhood. We might as well have painted REDNECK on Uncle Ray’s vehicle.

“This looks like a nice group of gentlemen coming up on the right,” Troy said. I went forward and leaned over so I could see
out the front of the truck. A group of six young black men was congregated on the side of a run-down building. The windows
had been boarded up and the brick side of the building was covered with graffiti.

“This will do,” I said. Troy guided the camper to a stop alongside the young men. Scott and I helped Skull to his feet; then
I opened up the door to the back of the camper and stepped out.

“You’re in the wrong neighborhood,” one of the black kids told me.

“That’s no way to greet someone who is about to give you a present,” I said.

“What present you gonna give us?” he said.

“Just watch,” I said.

Scott cut the duct tape that held Skull’s legs together and helped him step down from the camper. Skull certainly looked handsome
in his Aryan Resistance jacket, but I think what really impressed the crowd was the WHITE POWER he had tattooed across his
knuckles.

“You all have a nice day,” I said to the black kids as Scott and I climbed back into the camper.

I closed the door to the camper and yelled up front to Troy. “Head for Colorado,” I said. “Obey all the traffic laws.”

I
WAS PUTTING LINSEED OIL
on the house. I do this every year to protect the wood from the effects of the sun. A big Crown Victoria approached my home
on the dirt driveway. It was Valeska.

I stepped down off the ladder. I was wearing old clothes that I would throw away when I finished the linseed oil project.
“If I had known you were coming, I would have dressed up.”

“I just wanted to share some good news,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Mongoose cut a deal.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. When we searched his locksmith shop up in Lander, we did a careful check of the metal trash cans. There was burn residue
in one. Our crime lab guys say they found traces of burnt leather, burnt plastic, and burnt business cards, all consistent
with the burning of Lowell’s credentials. We also found a record from a motel in Bozeman showing that Mongoose stayed there
for one night, about a month before Lowell was killed. When we told all this to Mongoose, he caved.”

“Is he talking about Skull?”

“Yes, we’re going to charge Skull with Lowell’s murder. It will be a death penalty case. Murder of a federal agent. It may
take a week or two before he is arraigned.”

“Why’s that?”

“He got into it with some black kids up in Boise a few weeks ago. He’s in a federal medical facility right now.”

“Really?”

“He claims a couple of men burned down this compound he lives on, kidnapped him, and dumped him in a black neighborhood.”

“The world is a crazy place,” I said.

There was a brief pause. “Anyhow,” she said, “there is one other thing I wanted to tell you.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“At the back of Bugg’s address book we found some numbers.”

“Phone numbers?”

“No, these all had eight or nine digits. Did you notice them when you studied his address book?”

“Can’t say that I did.”

“It really stumped me for a while. I couldn’t figure out the significance of these numbers. So I showed it to Cliff—”

“Livingston?”