Hard Target (39 page)

Haldemann stopped a few steps away and thrust both hands into his deep coat pockets.

Normally, such a move would heighten Uzi’s paranoia a notch: Did the man have a weapon secreted away? He fought to keep his thoughts in check and said, “I see you found the place okay.”

“I’m here. Why, I’m not sure. But you’ve got five seconds to tell me who you are.”

“Name’s Uzi. I’m with the Bureau. Like I said, I was a friend of Bishop’s.”

“He never mentioned you.”

“He never mentioned you, either.”

“I thought you said—”

“He was working with me on some things that might involve your former group. Your name...came up.” Telling Haldemann he was with Bishop at the moment he was killed wouldn’t put the man’s mind at ease. “I’d like to continue that relationship you had with him.”

“I don’t talk to Feds.”

Uzi pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket. He didn’t smoke anymore, but he wanted to look relaxed, as if he couldn’t care if Haldemann cooperated or not. More importantly, he pegged Haldemann as a smoker, and sharing a hit of nicotine seemed a good way of finding common ground. He offered the man a cigarette, and he took it.

Seconds later, a smoke cloud hovered around them. “You’re no longer with SRM,” Uzi said.

“I didn’t like the merger, didn’t approve of what they were doing. But Lewis had his reasons.”

“Lewis.”

“Lewiston Grant. Guy’s fucking brilliant. Born leader. Ex-Green Beret.”

Grant... An ex-Green Beret. Interesting. If true, how come we didn’t know that?
“But you didn’t see eye-to-eye with him.”

Haldemann took a long drag. “He’s also a snake. You know much about Southern Ranks and how it became ARM?”

Uzi shook his head. Even if he knew the whole story—which he didn’t—an insider would provide a different take.

“Southern Ranks used to be about guys getting together because they didn’t like the way the government was taking away our constitutional rights, telling us how to live. What chemicals we could use to fertilize our lawns, which guns we could or couldn’t own. Didn’t seem right to me how they could just take away our freedoms like that, how they could use affirmative action and NAFTA and shit like that to take away our jobs.”

He dragged again on the Camel, left it dangling from his lips. “I saw a flyer on my windshield one day back in late ninety-two, just after Ruby Ridge. It said the same stuff about the government that I thought. So I called the number. It was Lewiston Grant, he was starting up a group to watch out for citizens’ rights. I went to a meeting, and the guy really knew what he was talking about. Said he’d been to some big leadership gathering in Colorado, and it made him think long and hard about things. He wanted to start a group of his own. I mean, I sat there listening to Lewis, and I thought, Finally. Somebody who understands what I’ve been saying all these years.”

Uzi leaned back against the lion and examined the cigarette. “So you two started Southern Ranks.”

“It took off real fast. Lewis had all these great ideas. Pretty soon we had a couple hundred members and started having regular meetings. Lewis even wrote a book.
America’s Second Revolution
. People started calling in from all over the country wanting to buy a copy. The guy worked at a cannery during the day, then soon as he got home he went to work on his computer. He was a freakin’ machine. And a great speaker. You got goosebumps all over, he really got your blood going. Like a preacher. I mean it, he got you all revved up. Pretty soon, you’re nodding your head, agreeing to do things you never thought you’d be doing.”

“You’re talking about him in the past. Is he dead?”

Haldemann chuckled. “You can’t kill a guy like Lewiston Grant. I’m sure he’s alive and kicking. He faked his death a few years ago, changed his identity, some shit like that. Nelson Flint’s his lackey, a figurehead. People don’t take Flint seriously, so they don’t take ARM seriously. A blip on the radar, just the way Lewis wants it. Behind the scenes, Lewis is the brains.”

This confirmed Uzi’s suspicions and fit with the intel DeSantos had assembled before their first visit to ARM. “You said you agreed to do things you never thought you’d do. What kind of things?”

“You think I’m stupid? I answer that, I’ll find myself rotting away in some federal prison.”

“We’re off the record here. I’m investigating the assassination attempt on the VP. That’s it.”

“So you think I should trust you guys, just because you tell me to.”

Uzi looked the man in the eyes, then took a drag. “Yeah. I got that.” He stuck the Camel in his mouth, pulled open his jacket, and lifted up his pullover sweater. Haldemann looked down at his bare skin. “No wires,” Uzi said. “No recordings. Just two guys talking about things.”

Haldemann looked away, blew some smoke from his mouth. “Lewis said we had to find a way to pay for everything. He said until we had some money behind us, we couldn’t get our message out to enough people. So SRM hit an armored car. That bankrolled our raid of a couple of weapons depots. Took in a ton of arms and explosives before two of our guys got killed.”

“That was ’97 or ’98, right? Shootout near Fort Decatur. Three officers were taken hostage and killed, another infantryman was paralyzed.”

Haldemann’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, ’98. February sixteen. That was the last job we did. I’m sure the Feds figured it was SRM, but they didn’t have anything tying it to us. I kept saying, too close a call, Lewis. Too close.” He took a long drag. “Finally—reluctantly—Lewis agreed with me. Started looking at other ways of increasing membership. But the economy was good, and it’s easier to get peoples’ attention when they’ve lost their jobs and things are shitty.”

“Like now.”

“Like now.” He took another drag, seemed lost in thought a moment. “Anyway, that’s when Lewis started getting weird.”

“How so?”

“He started talking more and more about a government conspiracy. See, most militias believe a secret group called the New World Order is gonna take over the world. They’ll use the UN, which is run behind the scenes by a group of wealthy, powerful men. The UN’s foreign troops will invade the US, enslave the American public, and install a global dictator.”

“And just how are they going to get past the US military?”

“Oh, our government’s in on it. According to Lewis, it’s all being run by FEMA.”

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency?” Uzi stifled a laugh. “They help people. After hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes. They get people back on their feet.”

“Officially, yes. But their original purpose was an offshoot of the military, to help out after a nuclear war. Lewis says they’re now a shadow government that’s in bed with the UN. He said they’ve got executive orders in place that give FEMA control over our communication facilities, power and food supplies, transportation depots...and, they’ve got a hundred thousand Hong Kong police hidden in the salt mines in Utah, just waiting for the word to be given by the UN dictators.” Haldemann took a puff. “Lewis used to mention the New World Order in his talks, how Yahweh commanded us to take up arms against it. But he never got so specific about it.”

“Yahweh?”

“God. We— I mean, they—don’t use the word God because it’s ‘dog’ spelled backwards.”

Uzi’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

“Lewis said he’d gotten hold of all kinds of ‘proof’ that the New World Order was real. He said it all started with Ruby Ridge and Waco, how they were dry runs for the Feds going door to door to arrest innocent people like us—good, hard-working Americans who fought to keep our constitutional rights. He said FEMA’s got dozens of subterranean concentration camps set up all over the country, for people who challenge the government and fight the New World Order. They’re gonna kill us all once the invading armies have control.”

Uzi flicked away a train of ashes from his cigarette. “They really believe this crap?”

“Shit yeah. Hate to admit it, but I did, too. It’s in the delivery. Like I said, Lewis is very good at what he does. He got all worked up, told everyone what was going on, and then showed them. Photos of the concentration camps. Hidden messages buried in laws Congress passed. Eyewitness accounts of black helicopters carrying UN troops into position, hovering over militia compounds, following members in their cars, and taking secret pictures of their homes. It was hard to disagree with what he was saying. It all seemed to fit. Everyone bought into it.”

“Belief in a conspiracy keeps your membership active, interested in the cause,” Uzi said. “It’s no different with the Islamic terrorist groups. If there are powerful enemies plotting against you, your membership stays focused on stopping them. Gives them purpose, an us-against-them mentality.” Uzi eyed Haldemann, gauging his reaction. If what he was saying made sense to the man, Haldemann was truly “over” the militia movement. Only a person outside the closed group could see the conspiracy for what it really was.

Haldemann dragged hard on his Camel but offered no response.

“So you were concerned about where Grant was leading the group,” Uzi said.

“One day Lewis and I were out shooting in the woods and he said he wanted to bomb Camp Grayson, that National Guard base outside Bethesda. He had photos of railroad cars carrying Russian tanks into the base. He said it was the beginning of the foreign invasion, and that we had to stop it. He had this whole plan drawn up. Tell you the truth, it scared the shit out of me. I drove home that night and started thinking. SRM wasn’t like it used to be. It changed. From trying to make people aware of government abuses to some big plot to take over the world.

“So I drove over to Camp Grayson and asked to talk with the person in charge. Some guy came out and I told him what the photos showed. He told me it was part of training exercises using Russian tanks we’d captured during Desert Storm, that if it was a conspiracy, they wouldn’t have been transporting the tanks in open rail cars. I looked at him, and it hit me. Shit, this guy’s right. I wondered if Lewis knew this and didn’t care because he needed us to believe an invasion was in the works, or if he really thought they were coming for us. I went back and told Lewis what I’d done. He went ballistic, said I had no business going behind his back like that. I realized he didn’t care about the truth, he needed ‘the enemy’ just so we’d all stay together, united against a common cause.”

“Exactly,” Uzi said, relieved that Haldemann was exhibiting signs of reason.

“He called off the raid. Next thing I knew, he was saying we needed bigger numbers so our voice would be heard. He changed his title to ‘General’—he said Ulysses S. Grant was a Jew-hater, and he wanted to honor the man’s legacy. So
General
Grant started talking to Nelson Flint about merging our group with his. Flint’s group was the American Revolution Klansmen back then. Their roots went back to Flint’s father, a Klansman in West Virginia. Nelson took over after the old man pulled a gun on a state trooper.

“They expanded into government conspiracy, too, and that’s where Flint and Lewis found out they had a lot in common. The two groups decided to focus on stopping the New World Order. Lewis sold Flint on the idea that together they were stronger. Really, Lewis just wanted numbers—the power he could get from having more men under his ‘command.’ By merging with ARK, he gained ten thousand members. Most of ’em were racist, white supremacist, card-carrying Klansmen, but to Lewis, that was a good thing. He said it made them more committed to the cause. So ARK and SRM became ARM. They drew up a charter, and first on the list was gun control.”

“Gun control,” Uzi said. He tossed his nearly untouched Camel to the ground. His senses were sharp, refreshed. He felt he’d stumbled onto something important.

“They figured the first thing the New World Order would need to do in order to keep control over the People was to take away our guns. The Brady Bill started it all, they said. Then came the attack on the Second Amendment. Lewis said that any gun law is unconstitutional. Main thing is, they’re afraid that once the New World Order agents take away our guns, there’d be nothing we could do to stop the UN troops from moving in.”

“How serious are they about all this?”

“Dead serious. The militias consider the Second Amendment to be holier than the Ten Commandments. Weapons are sacred to them. Every spare dollar is spent buying more guns and ammunition. Assault rifles, automatic machine guns, rounds and rounds of ammo. The way they see it, you can’t have enough. To the militias, this is a holy war. Like them A-rab extremists.”

“How far would they go to make sure their guns aren’t taken away from them?”

Haldemann laughed. He took a pull on his cigarette, then exhaled and watched the smoke disappear into the night sky.

“Would they kill?” Uzi asked.

“‘Would they kill?’ You kidding? They’d find out whoever was responsible and blow the fucker clear to Kingdom Come.”

Uzi thought of the C-4 on Glendon Rusch’s helicopter. “Does Grant stream a radio show over the Internet to ARM members?”

Haldemann eyed him carefully. “How do you know about that?”

“Thanks for your time. I appreciate what you’ve told me.” He offered Haldemann a card. “If you ever need anything.”

Haldemann hesitated, then took it and walked off toward the Metro escalator. He glanced back at Uzi once, then stepped onto the stairpad.

As it began to descend, Uzi saw Haldemann toss the card to the ground.

DAY EIGHT

6:26 AM

31 hours 34 minutes remaining

Thoughts sped through Uzi’s mind faster than he could process them. He’d slept fitfully, and finally decided to give up the charade and get out of bed. Now, sitting at the kitchen table, he drummed his fingers on the surface, trying to process what Haldemann had told him.

He glanced at the clock and realized he had to get in the shower or he’d be late for his session with Rudnick.
Fuck it. Can’t deal with it now
. He pulled out his phone and texted Shepard.

skipping shrink appt. too much going on

He tossed his phone aside, opened his iPad, and began dictating notes when his Nokia vibrated. Return text from Shepard.

wisconsin resident agency is short an agent. pack ur bags. naming osborn new head of jttf.

Uzi clenched his jaw.
Goddamn it, Shep. Cut me some slack.
He closed his eyes, took a breath, and replied:

dont like cheese. will make my appt.

He looked at his notes, realized he had lost his train of thought, and shut his iPad. Perhaps a cold shower would shake loose some useful ideas.

UZI SAT OPPOSITE RUDNICK, his foot drumming a furious beat on the carpeted floor. Rudnick sipped his coffee and waited for Uzi to speak.

“Are you feeling okay this morning?” Rudnick finally asked.

“Me? Yeah, fine. Just a lot on my mind. Things are starting to come together, I think. You okay if we skip today’s session? I’ve got a ton of things to follow up on and very little time left.”

“When we last talked, you were having some issues with Leila. How’s that coming along?”

Clearly, skipping the session’s not an option
. “So much has been going on with the investigation, we haven’t had much time together.”

“I see.”

“I did run into Jake Osborn. That didn’t go so well.”

“The agent you wrote up, yes. So you were expecting a more favorable reaction?”

“No.”

Rudnick took a long drink of coffee, then leaned back in his chair and seemed to appraise Uzi for a moment. “The FBI wasn’t your first choice when you moved back to the US, was it?”

“You’ve been spending time in my personnel file.”

“Just a bit. But there’s really nothing in there. Just a note that you interviewed with the CIA.”

“Their Special Activities Division,” Uzi said. “Secret paramilitary operators that work undercover. They do everything the military does, and more—and with deniability. I was looking at hooking up with their Ground Branch.”

“Sounds right up your alley.”

“Because of, well, because of what had happened, I’d had my fill of covert missions. Enough following orders. I realized I couldn’t handle it mentally anymore. I’d lost my edge, my mental toughness.” Uzi forced a grin. “You realize what it took for me to admit that just now?”

Rudnick didn’t smile. “You had ‘enough of following orders,’ yet you chose to work for the FBI, where protocols and procedures are vital to the performance of your job.”

The grin evaporated from Uzi’s face. “We’re back to Osborn.”

“We’ll get to Osborn in a minute. First let’s talk about ‘what had happened,’ as you put it.”

“How about...let’s not.”

“I really think it’ll help. Go back to your days with the Mossad. Was following orders something they stressed?”

Uzi’s foot was tapping the floor furiously as he decided whether or not to answer Rudnick. Realizing the good doctor wouldn’t allow him to sidestep the issue, he pressed on. “Mission success was the bottom line. They gave you the tools needed to get the job done and the rest was up to you. There were rules, yeah, but they were there to ensure survival. If you didn’t follow those rules, you ended up getting caught and embarrassing Israel, or getting killed. Or both.”

“What was your role?”

“I did what I did because it was necessary. But I’m not proud of it.”

“It?”

Uzi looked away. He pulled a toothpick from his pocket. He could feel Rudnick’s gaze on him as he fumbled with the plastic.

“Those toothpicks are like cigarettes for you, aren’t they?”

“I used to smoke. These are a hell of a lot healthier.”

“Are you embarrassed about what you did with Mossad?”

“Embarrassed? No. Not embarrassed. It was necessary. It was my job.”

“Yes...” Rudnick said. “But there’s something that still bothers you about it.”

Uzi had to give the shrink credit. He was very intuitive. He read his patients as if their diagnoses were imprinted on their foreheads. “Killing someone would bother any law-abiding citizen, even if the people you killed were terrorists, horrible people who enjoyed killing others because they were different and had different beliefs.

“During wars, soldiers sit in tanks with a ton of steel between them and the enemy. Or they fly in jets a few thousand feet in the air dropping bombs on a faceless enemy...lie on a mountainside hundreds of yards away and pull a trigger...launch a missile from a drone. Or fire a machine gun across a ravine. But what I did was up close and personal.”

A moment later, Rudnick caught on. “A kidon. A government-sponsored assassin.”

“If our operatives found out about a terrorist plot and infiltrated the cell, they would call us in. It was our job to...neutralize that cell before they could do any damage.”

“You killed them before they could kill innocent people.”

“Only if they’d killed before and posed a known risk to the general population.” Uzi chuckled. “Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It’s not. You try to go about your business because you know what you’re doing is right. But you still wake up in cold sweats reliving the mission.”

Rudnick nodded slowly, then took a sip from his coffee, as if he were measuring his response. Finally, he said, “I would imagine it’s a very difficult thing for anyone to live with, regardless of who your...targets are.”

“Over the years I worked with other counterterrorism agents— Special Operational Forces, GSG-9s, MI5s, MI6s. We all felt the same way. Yeah, there were some who got off on it, the killing, but most did what we did for our country.” He shrugged a shoulder. “’Course, knowing that didn’t really make it any easier to live with.”

“Your last job was before Dena’s...death?”

Uzi felt his eyes tearing and looked away. He managed a nod, but couldn’t get his voice to work. He cleared his throat and, staring at the floor, said, “A terrorist cell that’d assassinated one of our interior ministers was also responsible for three other bombings. A café, a disco, and a school bus. Seventy-nine were killed. They were planning an attack on the Knesset, to take out a major portion of the Israeli government. It’d be like 9/11, if the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania had made it to the Capitol building.”

“It would’ve been...very demoralizing.”

“And it would’ve triggered a war with devastating consequences. So the agents kept a watch on the group’s activities, checked and double-checked everything. We found out how they were going to do it. They’d be able to defeat the building’s defenses and hit different parts of the structure simultaneously. But we didn’t know when it was going down.” Uzi relived the events in his head as if they’d happened a month ago. “There was one point each day when the six terrorists were in separate locations. We knew where and when, and I was given the assignment of eliminating one of them. Another five kidons were dispatched to take out the others.”

“Sounds like a pretty important mission they entrusted to you.”

“The kidon they’d originally assigned got injured. I was the backup. I’d trained alongside him, so I knew the op as well as he did. Funny thing is, if I hadn’t gone, my family would still be alive today. Strange how things work out, isn’t it, Doc?”

“Uzi, you can’t—”

Uzi held up a hand. “There are some things you have control over, and some you don’t. Nothing I could’ve done differently on that. Luck of the draw.”

“So what went wrong?”

“They didn’t tell me till the morning of the hit that I was going in. They did that sometimes so you didn’t stress over it. You trained for days, sometimes weeks, and then one day they just said ‘Get your gear, you’re going in.’ That’s when they told me who my target was. I couldn’t believe it. I knew the guy. Ahmed Ishaq, one of our best informants. I told the director general there was some mistake, that Ahmed would never do this. He told me to carry out my orders, that our intel was good. He asked me if I could handle this mission, and I told him of course.

“But in the back of my mind, I had doubts. I thought that if I could just talk to Ahmed, find out what was going on....” Uzi shook his head. “I just couldn’t believe Ahmed was a terrorist.”

“So you went to meet him.”

“I should’ve followed mission protocols,” Uzi said, pounding the knife-edge of his right hand into the palm of his left. “Everything was mapped out. Mossad had reconfigured their training facility to match Ahmed’s safe house, so I knew the layout before I went in. I’d practiced the maneuvers so many times I could’ve done it in the dark.” Uzi chuckled sardonically. “My grandmother used to say, ‘Man plans and God laughs.’ Because when emotions enter the equation, everything goes to hell. The best kidons leave their emotions at the door. That’s the way I’d handled all my missions. Except this one.”

“I take it the Director General was right about Mr. Ishaq.”

Uzi was staring at the floor. Finally, he spoke without raising his eyes. “I wanted to give him every opportunity to come clean. But he couldn’t, because...yes, the director general was right. And it all blew up in my face. One of his buddies was in the back room. I didn’t approach the mission like I was supposed to do. I should’ve scoped out the house, known everyone who was in there. Bottom line, Ahmed was guilty and trapped. They started shooting. I got caught in the cross fire, pinned down. I couldn’t even get a shot off. But Ahmed got hit, probably by a ricochet from his partner’s gun. The other guy took off.”

“What about the other five terrorists?”

“Eliminated.”

“Then I don’t understand,” Rudnick said. He took a sip of coffee. “May not have gone as planned, but it sounds like the mission objectives were met.”

Uzi was still staring at nothing.

“Right?” Rudnick asked after a long silence.

“We stopped the terrorist attack. So, yeah. But the guy at Ahmed’s place who got away. That’s where the problems started. When Dena and Maya were killed...” Uzi stopped, his voice choking down. He looked up at the ceiling. His eyes were moist. “A note was left. It read, ‘For Ahmed.’”

“But you didn’t kill Ahmed,” Rudnick said. “His colleague—”

“His buddy couldn’t admit he’d shot one of his own. I’m sure he told the others in his cell that I’d killed him. That
is
what I was supposed to do. I’m sure it wasn’t hard convincing them that I was the one who’d killed him. Why would they question it?”

Rudnick nodded. “I see. So one of the remaining members of this terrorist group tracked you down and...effected revenge. And you blame yourself.”

Uzi said nothing.

“Well, my friend, this explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

The toothpick bobbed up and down on Uzi’s lips. He was trying his hardest to fight back the tears. But a knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.

Rudnick’s brow crumpled. He rose from his chair and cracked the door open.

Just then, Uzi’s phone rang. The caller ID told him it was Marshall Shepard’s private cell phone. “Yeah.”

“Uzi, listen carefully. Some bad stuff’s going down. I don’t know the whole story, but I’m working on it. It’s gonna take some time. Just cooperate and don’t make it any harder—”

Uzi turned in his seat and saw a gray-and-black uniformed law enforcement officer through the doorway. The man and Rudnick exchanged a brief, muffled conversation—during which Uzi heard his name.

This is about me
. Shepard’s phone call suddenly made sense.

“I’m a psychologist,” Rudnick said, louder. “I’m not at liberty to disclose who’s a patient—”

“It’s okay, Doc,” Uzi said. He was on his feet, moving toward the door. “I’m Aaron Uziel.”

A suited man nudged the door open and pushed through. It wasn’t until he had entered the treatment suite did Uzi see there were a handful of officers in the anteroom. And their guns were drawn.

Definitely not a positive sign.

“Aaron Uziel, Detective Jack Paulson, Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department. I’ve got a warrant here for your arrest. Do you have any weapons on your person, sir?”

“What’s going on?” Rudnick asked. “You can’t just barge into a doctor’s office and arrest his patient—”

“We can and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Paulson said matter-of-factly. “Now step back, sir, and don’t interfere or we’ll have to take you in, too.”

Uzi slowly spread his arms like an eagle, his Nokia still in his right hand. An officer stepped forward and patted down Uzi’s body, removing the Glock from its holster. Next he found the Puma tactical knife in Uzi’s pocket and then the Tanto hanging around his neck.

“I’ve got a boot knife, too.”

The officer handed it all to Paulson, who squinted as he eyed the weapons cache, no doubt wondering why an FBI agent was so heavily—and unconventionally—armed.

“I’ll ask you not to make any sudden moves,” Paulson said. “You know the drill.” Paulson turned around. “Chuck.”

A man in a brown windbreaker stepped through the crowd of officers. He opened a small toolkit on the carpet and peeled a couple of wide swatches of adhesive tape from a plastic wrapper. He applied the strips to Uzi’s hands, then removed and carefully packaged them.

Uzi knew what they were doing, and he didn’t like the implications. “What’s the charge?”

The technician nodded at Paulson.

Paulson nudged Uzi around, then pulled his prisoner’s arms down one at a time and affixed a set of handcuffs.

“Aaron Uziel, you’re under arrest for the murder—”

“Murder?” Uzi craned his neck to look at Paulson. “Of who?”

“John Quincy Adams.”