Fortunes of the Dead (10 page)

About the time these thoughts permeated Wilson's weary and buzzed brain, Rugger had leaned back in the chair and mentioned that he'd been hit by the same kind of bullet in his
right
thigh a decade ago, that it had taken him over a year to get back on his feet, and that he'd recovered pretty well but it was three years before he was really back to normal. He opened his wallet to show Wilson pictures of his kids, his dog, his brilliant university professor wife, a woman he clearly adored. He had a wealth of stories about his wife's absentmindedness, her skewed way of looking at the world, her left-wing politics that clashed with his conservative standpoint. Rugger then began listing one hundred and one reasons not to own a sheepdog—none of them convincing when matched with the man's obvious affection for the beast. Wilson knew the Agency had flown Rugger to Texas in order to give him peer support, and the amazing thing was that it had worked.

“Agent Wilson?” Vaughn was leaning across the desk, staring at him.

Wilson rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sure, I remember him. He came to see me when I was in the hospital out in Texas. We compared scars.”

“He liked you okay.”

“I liked him.”

Vaughn radiated annoyance. It did not matter to him who Wilson liked. “What I mean is, you made a good impression on him. He's the assistant S.A. out there in Nashville. You knew that, didn't you?”

“Right.” He hadn't.

“He wants to use you.”

“In Tennessee?”

“You got something against Tennessee?”

Wilson knew as little about Tennessee as anyone else in southern California, but he was pretty sure he would have a lot against it once he got out there. Clearly, he was being transferred. His first thought was of Sel. He didn't think she'd really grasped the concept that a federal job in law enforcement equals relocation. Wilson had only lately been working up the courage to ask her to move in. It might be a better idea to marry her. Although marriage was an option Wilson had given very little thought to, this was Sel, and he might like to marry her either way.

“Agent McCoy, are you with me here?”

Wilson shrugged. “I don't know that much about the South. Just that it's the Bible Belt—guns and Moses. I take it I'm being transferred?”

Vaughn shook his head. “Temporary assignment.”

Gun shows and flea markets
, Wilson thought, immediately followed by
Why me?

“It's not gun shows and flea markets, if that's what you're thinking.” Vaughn leaned back in his chair. “Son, I guess you know I've had my doubts about you. You don't act like the kind of agent I'm used to, but I've developed a lot of confidence in you.”

This was news to Wilson. He was pretty sure it was news to Vaughn, too, but Chesterfield was a company man and if the job required a temporary respect for Wilson McCoy, he'd have it.

“I think you handled that Waco business pretty well—”

Wilson looked away. “Handled well” and “Waco” were two phrases he'd never thought to hear in the same sentence.

“You've been slogging along in the trenches, doing a lot of sideline work since you got hurt out there, and I haven't heard word one of complaint.”

Wilson looked the man in the eye. They both knew that Chesterfield had been giving him low-end assignments, and that the only reason Wilson did anything halfway interesting was because he drummed up the business on his own. But then, that was how ATF operated anyway. No initiative, no career.

“I think Alex has a point. A guy like you, kind of different from the average federal bear, can have an advantage in certain situations. And we've got a situation.”

A situation
. Two magic words. Wilson was newly alert to Vaughn's tone of voice and he felt a tiny jab of excitement at the base of his spine.
Hallelujah mama, let's hope this is good
. As soon as Vaughn started talking, Wilson realized how good.

“You ever hear any whispers about a guy called Rodeo?”

Wilson maintained a blank look, something he was good at. Yes, he had heard, just a hint, but he had no intention of admitting what he'd heard or from whom. In the aftermath of the Waco disaster and the finger-pointing, there was a brother- and sisterhood between the ATF agents who'd been there, the bond impenetrable, unspoken, permanent. And strictly out of any official influence. They watched each other's backs from every direction, including the “friendlies.”

“No? I thought maybe you had. We're fairly certain we've got an assassin at work. As a matter of fact, at this point we're sure.”

“An assassin? Who are his targets, sir?”

“His targets are agents—ATF and FBI.”

“FBI?”

“Yeah, FBI. And the targets all have one thing in common.”

“Waco?” Wilson had heard the rumors, dropped in his lap as a faint but possible warning, but had put it down to paranoia. Two agents murdered in the last eight years—bad, but not a trend. Unless you added dead agents from the FBI. That might be a trend.

“So you do know: Yes, Waco. Every single one of them was there.”

“How many?” Wilson asked. He drifted away, mentally, connecting bits and pieces. He had an advantage over other men in that he was not a linear thinker. What Vaughn had always considered Wilson's
California moron look
was really the face of a creative thinker. Wilson could shift from subject to subject, moving in and out to consider an inexhaustible range of possibilities—an ability that gave him the same cerebral advantages as a woman.

“Three from the FBI, two from our side; five total. We know he's got an agent in his sights and we know the agent is located in the Southeast—either Tennessee or Kentucky. We're going to get him first.”

“And the name of the perp is … Rodeo?”

Vaughn rubbed his chin. “Nickname, obviously. Had some guys in D.C. working with a marine intel group out at Pendleton in geographical forensics. They came up with an unmistakable correlation between the location of the hits and several select annual rodeos. Right now we've got it narrowed down to the U.S. Pro Am Markus Bourbon Rodeo, but he seems to move around.”

Wilson waited. He scratched his nose. “This is all we've got after both agencies have been on this five years?”

“Three years. That's when we decided we had something going and connected it up with Waco.”

“Killer doesn't leave any little notes or anything?”

“No notes. No variation in the method of execution.” Vaughn removed a legal-sized file from an accordion folder. He laid crime scene photos in a square on his desk. Very precisely, no overlap.

Wilson scooted his chair closer. He didn't recognize any of the faces, but he wouldn't, even if one had been his brother. Looking at the row of victims he was reminded of those little puzzles in elementary school where you looked at a series of pictures and tried to pick out the differences.

The faces were alike—eyes half-lidded, face puffy, tongue lolling, neck swelling almost comically over the wire that was used to strangle them. They'd been shocked with a high voltage Taser or prod, which had been powerful enough to knock them out, leaving a significant burn mark. Merciful in the long run. Their hands and feet had been bound with baling wire, and they'd been strangled from behind, wire wrapped tightly around their neck. The killer had only to cross the loose ends and pull tightly, and the wire would bite through the flesh and deliver a quick, brutal execution. There were no defense wounds, no signs of struggle, no histamine levels that showed high and extended pain levels before death. All five were male, and had been incapacitated and killed quickly, the whole procedure over in five to eight minutes tops.

Wilson settled back in his chair. He realized his leg was aching. He'd been too absorbed to feel it.

“Taser—cattle prod. Baling wire—large animals. Rodeo. That can't be all.”

Vaughn leaned back in his chair. “It's not. We've spent the last two years chasing a network of loosely connected conspiracy groups. Up until about six weeks ago, we were sure they were the major players.”

“What kind of conspiracy groups are we talking about?”

“Most of them are survivalist wanna-bes. They're not holed up in Oregon, like the serious hard cores, but they have a nasty edge and they talk the talk. They've got a gun rack in the basement, a fishing boat in the backyard, wouldn't be caught dead drinking bottled water. They get on the Internet and play with conspiracies and the teachings of Rush Limbaugh like computer nerds play Dungeons and Dragons. They're convinced the government is collecting all their receipts from the local Kroger's and Wal-Mart and keeping a file on what they buy. They're still talking about Ruby Ridge.”

They had a point over that one
, Wilson thought.

“Plenty of these guys have enough weapons to make them dangerous no matter how stupid they are.”

The stupider they are, the scarier they are
, Wilson thought.

“Most of the time they can't get organized enough even to meet regularly, and if they do, they stay up all night and drink beer and whiskey, tell dirty jokes, beat their chest. Pajama parties with the NRA. But with every victim but the first, one of these so-called organizations has put out notice on who will get hit, usually before we even find a body. It's been a different group every time, local to the dead zone—and their stream of information comes simultaneously with the execution. They broadcast like sports commentators at a ball game. It's weird and it's creepy and now, for the first time, they're giving hints about who's next.”

“When you say broadcast—”

“Audio streams on the Internet. Easy to trace. We have time and location and I'll get you a download of the files so you can listen.”

“Shit,” Wilson said.

“In a word.”

“They identify the target by name?” Wilson wondered when his would come up. If it hadn't already. There'd been a lot of ATF agents in the mix of law enforcement, military advisers, and civilians.

Vaughn shook his head. “No names. Yet. They give the state, and now the city where the agent lives. Their information is a hundred percent accurate every time. And it's coming out earlier and a little more specific in the detail, with less time between.”

“Escalating.”

Vaughn nodded.

“So if they're not doing the killing themselves … the assassin is using them to draw our interest?”

“That's the general consensus. Rodeo uses the groups as a shield, so he can do his thing without us on his ass. The groups take the credit and feel like they have a hand in the affairs of the big bad world, knowing that if it comes to court they'll be safe—unless, of course, there's a conspiracy to have them framed. So the goofs get to splash around in the big boy pool and make a lot of waves while the assassin does his work. We don't know who the killer is or why he's doing it, other than the obvious Waco connection.”

“And they've made another broadcast? That the next hit will be on a Tennessee or Kentucky agent?”

“No.”

Wilson waited for Chesterfield to do the song and dance that would indicate an informant so vulnerable no one was admitting his existence. Which was invaluable but would also complicate things, when it came down to warrants.

Vaughn pulled another set of pictures out of the open file and handed them to Wilson.

She reminded him of Sel. Slender with luxurious, dark hair that hung over her shoulders.

“One of ours?”

Vaughn nodded.

“It usually is,” Wilson said.

“We've had agents infiltrating groups we targeted as likely. Hoping to get lucky. And we did.”

Wilson turned the pictures facedown on the desk.

“She was good. I'll give you a copy of her report, but it boils down to this. The assassin arranges a meet with a group. He doesn't go himself; he always sends an intermediate who meets with a select member of the organization in an out-of-the-way place, gives them the information, and they never see or hear from him again. The last thing our agent came up with was the U.S. Pro-Am Markus Bourbon Rodeo. Since she was killed less than twenty-four hours later, we figure she was on the right track.”

“Where's the rodeo now? Are they on the road?”

“They're in South Carolina.”

“Is that typical? The distance?”

Vaughn peeled a piece of skin back on the edge of his thumb. “Sometimes more. That's why it took us so long to tag the rodeo connection.” Vaughn cleared his throat. “Alex Rugger will be running the op from Tennessee and he wants you on the Kentucky end of the thing.”

“ATF outpost there is Louisville?”

“And Lexington. That's where we want you. There's been a complication. An ATF intern, female, college student at Eastern Kentucky University; she's been missing for two months. Her car was found in her apartment parking lot, looks like she was killed in the vehicle. No body, one suspect. A deputy sheriff from London, Kentucky, named Edgers, who was doing some temp work for the Lexington office.”

Wilson groaned. He did not envy the Lexington S.A.

“Local police investigation is being run by a Detective Joel Mendez. Lexington outpost says he's good. No arrests imminent, but the theory is the sheriff and the intern had a thing, and the sheriff killed her, crime of passion, blah blah blah.”

“But not one of our guys?”

“
Hell
no. As it turns out, the London cops were kind of unloading this guy. He's a hotdog, not good at following orders, sure there's only one Way to do things, which is his way. Kind of guy works lots of hours and gets nothing done. Kind of guy you avoid when you're heading out to lunch.”

“Where is London, Kentucky?”

“Roughly an hour and a half drive south of Lexington.”

“What was he doing with our office in Kentucky? Other than …”