Breaking Point (15 page)

"Enough talk," she said. "Actions speak louder than words, remember?"

"Really? Maybe you better show me. I kinda don't remember."

She threw her pillow at him. "You
better
remember!"

Portland, Oregon

"You think the kids will be all right?" Howard asked.

"You want me to drive?" his wife said. "You know you can't worry and drive at the same time. This is the village of the happy nice people, John. At least compared to where we live. They are in a crowd full of people playing with
boomerangs,
for God's sake, they'll be fine."

They were driving through a tunnel on Highway 26 that led into downtown Portland. The walls of the tunnel were white tile, and they were pristine. Not just white--there wasn't any graffiti painted on them. Clean.

"This is the cleanest town I've ever been in," she said, echoing his thought. "No trash, no beer bottles, it's like Disney World."

Somebody honked, just like somebody always seemed to do in a long tunnel, just to hear the sound it made. He nodded in the direction of the honker."Yeah, too bad they can't get rid of the morons."

"Stay in the center lane," she said as they exited the tunnel.

It
was
a pretty city. There were more buildings than he remembered from his last visit, and the views of the mountains were not quite as open. Mount Hood still had snow on it, even in June, and to the left Mount Saint Helens did, too. He'd talked to people who'd lived here when the volcano blew its top off, back in the spring of 1980, and it had apparently been quite impressive.

The initial blast had not only blown powdered rock upward, it had spewed outward, knocking down trees, a "stone wind" that had scoured everything in its path. The explosion created ash and snowmelt pyroclastic flows that had filled lakes and rivers, knocked out bridges, buried a tourist lodge--empty, fortunately, save for the old man who ran it and refused to evacuate. Most of the people who died had been inside the safety zone established by the state, and it could have been a lot worse.

According to an old staff sergeant Howard knew who had been in town when it blew, the volcano had looked like a nuclear blast, great clouds of pulverized rock boiling into the stratosphere. The wind hadn't been blowing toward the city that day, so they'd missed the big ash fall, though they got some in subsequent eruptions. It was like living next door to a concrete plant when that happened, the sarge said, fine clouds of gray dust swirling in the streets like powdered snow. Jets had to detour around the city when the ash was at its heaviest; it would eat up the engines otherwise, and car air filters clogged and had to be changed within a few hours. People wore painters' masks to keep from choking on the stuff. It was hard to imagine it.

And you couldn't tell by looking at it now.

"Stay in this lane."

"I heard you the first time. Who's driving this car, me or you?"

"You're driving.
I'm
navigating. Clearly the more important job."

Howard grinned. Was there anything more wonderful than a bright woman? Even if she was shining that brightness into a place you'd rather keep dark sometimes, that didn't detract from her radiance.

"Yes, ma'am, you
are
the navigator."

She smiled back, and looked at the car's dash-mounted GPS. The little computer screen showed a map.

"Stay on this street--Market--until you get to Front Street, then turn left. Immediately get into the right lane, and turn right on the Hawthorne Bridge. The restaurant we want is called Bread and Ink, and it's thirty blocks east of the Willamette River."

"Begging the navigator's pardon, ma'am, but that's pronounced 'Will
-lam-
it,' not 'Will-uh-
met
.' Accent is on the second syllable."

"Ask me if I care."

"Just trying to keep the navigator honest, ma'am."

Howard's virgil chimed. He pressed the receive button. "Yes?"

"Hi, Dad. This is Tyrone. Just calling to check in. We're fine here. Everybody is fine, no problems, and how are you?"

"Nobody likes a smart-ass, Tyrone." He shook his head. "But thanks for calling."

Tyrone put on his airline pilot's voice: "Ah, roger that, parental unit two-oh-two. We'll, ah, be standing by here for, ah, your return. That's a discom."

"He's a good boy," Nadine said when Howard shut off the virgil.

"Yeah, I know. Too bad he's turned into a teenager."

"You survived it."

"Once. I don't know if I can do it again."

"I have great faith in you, General Howard. You are, after all, a leader of men. One boy, how hard could it be?"

They both grinned.

Chapter
15.

Friday, June 10th

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

A pair of armed guards--heavily armed guards--stepped from a cedar planked and shingled kiosk and waved the cars to a stop at a big wood-and-wire gate. The men were in camouflage clothing, and one of them kept his assault rifle trained on the ground right next to the car as the other man approached. Aside from the rifles, they had sidearms, big sheath knives, and some kind of grenades strapped on.

They must be burning up in that,
Morrison thought. It was in the high eighties out here, even in the woods.

"Colonel Ventura," the guard said. He saluted. "Good to see you again, sir."

Morrison's roommate of last night, Missey, was at the wheel. As they drove through the gate in a ten-foot-tall chainlink fence topped with coils of razor wire, Morrison said,
"Colonel
Ventura? What is this place?"

"The rank is honorary," Ventura said. "I did some work for the man who runs the place, once. And let's call it a ... patriot compound."

There was a car in front of them with Ventura's operatives, and one behind them, special vehicles rented at a place Morrison didn't think was going to run Hertz out of business. The guy who provided the cars had been covered in what looked like Maori tattoos, including his face, and the deal had been done in cash.

The drive from there had turned into a ride in the country, about forty-five minutes' worth to this place.

Morrison put two and two together: Idaho, men with guns in paramilitary gear, razor wire. "Some kind of militia group," he said. "Neo Nazis or white supremacists?"

"Let's just say if you were black, it would be a lot harder to call in the favor."

"Jesus."

"These people speak very highly of him, yes, but I doubt he spends much time here."

Morrison shook his head.

"Then again, it is unlikely in the extreme that anybody will sneak in here and kidnap you," Ventura said. "Certainly not anybody of the Oriental persuasion."

"I thought you said the Chinese wouldn't send somebody who looked Chinese."

They passed another trio of armed men in jungle camo sitting on or standing next to a military vehicle, a Hummer or Humvee or whatever. The three silently watched the cars go past, and when Morrison looked back, he saw one of the men hold up a com and speak into it.

"That's only if they want to sneak up on you. The Chinese don't like to delegate certain functions--they don't trust each other, much less round-eyes. If you arrange a meeting with them for something they want, they'll send someone who looks and acts the part. They won't want you to doubt their sincerity."

The narrow dirt road curved through another thick patch of woods, then into a cleared space maybe three or four acres big, with several prefab metal and wooden buildings centered in the clearing, all painted a drab olive green. A big air-conditioner rumbled in the background, spewing vapor into the hot afternoon.

There were more military-style vehicles, more armed men--as well as several armed women--and a pair of flags flying from a tall wooden pole in front of the largest of the structures. There was Old Glory, and under it, a shining white flag with what looked like a pair of crossed yellow lightning bolts over a line drawing of a hand.

"Sons of Pure Man," Ventura said, watching Morrison as he looked at the flags. "Empowered by God Almighty to smite the wicked, scourge the impure, and kick the asses of anybody else who would mongrelize the true race."

"These people are
friends
of yours?" Morrison said.

"These
people will help me keep the wily Chinese from grabbing you, draining you dry, and then smiling politely as they hand your widow your head with an apple stuffed into its mouth, on a platter. We aren't family here, but allies are where you find them--sometimes you have to overlook a few little cultural or philosophical differences."

Morrison sighed, but didn't say anything else. Ventura had a point. He was about to go into negotiations with people who had been wise in the ways of political and court intrigue for five thousand years. Being ruthless was not a problem for a culture with as much practice at it as they had. And he had hired Ventura for his expertise. As long as he did the job, Morrison didn't care how.

"So now you put in a call to your friend the used car buyer and invite him to drop round for a little chat. He won't like it, but he'll come, especially if he's figured out who you are, and that you might indeed have something worth selling."

"And after that?"

"Well, once they know you are where they can't get to you, then we can leave. Further communication can be relayed through here--the general has quite an up-to-date collection of electronics--and with any luck, we can keep them believing you are still here until the deal is done."

"And after the deal is done--if it is?"

"One step at a time, Dr. Morrison. We'll burn that bridge when we have to burn it. Oh, and by the way, after we step out of the car? Assume that everything we say is being monitored--because it probably is. They can't hear us in here because we're protected by certain devices, but outside, you can book it that somebody will have a shotgun mike or even a laser reader on us at all times."

" 'Allies,' you said?"

"Trust no one and no one can betray you. Just good tactics is all. Ah. There's the general, come to welcome us."

Jackson "Bull" Smith was no more a general than Ventura was a colonel, save to the bunch of mouthbreathers who hut-hut-hutted around his compound in the Idaho woods. Thirty years ago, Smith had been an Army infantryman, done some fighting in the Middle East, and more ground-pounding in one of the never-ending eastern European wars, but he'd never gotten past master sergeant, and that only when he got tapped to serve in the unit quartermasters, where he spent his last two tours. Still, he knew the Army way as well as any decent NCO, had seen legitimate action--he had a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star--and he was very canny. It was true you couldn't run an army without sergeants, and Smith knew the ropes well enough to organize a bunch of half-assed warrior-wannabes into a fair imitation of soldierly discipline. At the very least, they were good robbers, because that was chiefly how they raised their operating funds. So far, they had knocked over supermarkets, banks, a theater multiplex, an armored car, and a small Indian casino, all without being caught or losing a man, and without killing too many bystanders. Ventura knew their M.O., and he'd sort of halfway kept track. Smith's boys had stolen somewhere in the range of six to seven million dollars in the last year alone, Ventura guessed.

You could buy a lot of Idaho backwoods and MREs for seven million dollars.

As Smith stepped forward to shake his hand, Ventura nodded crisply at the man, a choppy, military bow. "General."

"Please, Luther, it's 'Bull.' "

Ventura suppressed a smile. Yeah, he thought it was bull, too. "I don't want to break discipline in front of the men."

"Understood," Smith said.

Ventura didn't know how much of the pure race crap Smith really believed, if any. The money and power were probably a lot more attractive, since Smith's history, military and otherwise, didn't show any particular contention with or hatred of any of the "mongrel" races until lately, but--you never knew. Pushing sixty, ole Bull here had been at this militia game for about ten years. He was living high on the hog, considering the location. Good food, good booze, women, toys, and the admiration and obedience of a couple hundred men, give or take. There were a lot worse ways to spend your time if you were an old ex-sergeant with no other skills.

Five years ago, when Ventura had still been in the assassination business, Smith had contacted him the usual roundabout way, and they had struck a deal. A certain influential politician in the Idaho statehouse--if that wasn't an oxymoron--had been standing in the way of Smith's acquisition of this very compound, something to do with land use, or butting up against state forestry property or some such. The politician, a state senator, knew what Bull and the boys were up to, and there was too much of that going on in Idaho already, the state was getting a real bad reputation. Tourists didn't want to come and see the boys playing war games--at least, not the kind of tourists the state wanted. It was bad for business if little junior went out picking berries and got mowed down by a bunch of gun-happy paramilitary goons who mistook him for an enemy, or Bambi, as had happened at least once.