SINCE HER plane had been recalled to Headquarters, Rachel waited at the county airport for Denver to send a Cessna six-seater. She checked in with Ashley, who had asked the consulate in Sydney to check on Laura Anderson at her nursing home in Brisbane, and the report had just come in. Though Anderson’s signature on various company documents had been authenticated, she had never heard of Magellan Holdings, nor, in fact, Martin Bishop. “They used her,” Ashley said.
“But who is they?”
“Exactly. Sydney’s checking on family connections, but she’s spent all her life Down Under. Worked her last fifteen years, until 2004, for the UN in New South Wales. Other than that, there’s nothing raising any red flags.”
“The United Nations?” Rachel asked, remembering James Sullivan, the man she’d met in 2009 in San Francisco, the same man who had warned Bishop to flee that party in Montclair, calling from the corner of Forty-First and Second, a block from the UN headquarters.
“Coincidence,” Ashley said, reading her mind. “The UN doesn’t have the funding to waste on American politics. Do you know how broke they are?”
Rachel didn’t, but she also didn’t put much faith in coincidence these days. “Forward me whatever they sent you,” she said.
Before disconnecting, Ashley hesitantly asked, “So this is it? You’re really going to close down the Brigade tonight?”
“Let’s wait and see,” she said, because she wasn’t allowing herself to feel excitement. She’d dug in, prepared for a long war, and it was unimaginable that, in the end, she would face only a couple of skirmishes.
Over the three hours she spent in the air, she conferred with the team already on the ground in Watertown, which had eyes on Mittag’s new safe house. “We’ve verified three males, two women,” said Luis Gonzales, the SWAT commander, “but there are more.”
“Anyone leaves, pick them up quietly, out of sight of the house. I’ll be touching down in…” She checked her watch. “Two hours.”
The pilot pushed the old jet to its limit, and by twelve thirty she’d landed at Watertown Regional, where a Bureau Suburban was already waiting. The driver, Special Agent Lawrence Young, was a heavyset black man who asked excited questions that were all variations on Ashley’s: You’re really going to close down the Brigade tonight? “All I know is that we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
He drove her through flat farmland and past signs for Lake Kampeska. Trees lined one side of the road, while the other side extended into the nighttime darkness, and she found herself thinking not of the forthcoming arrest but of the hours and days that would follow. She had questions that only Benjamin Mittag could answer. Who killed Martin Bishop, and why? Who had been funding the Massive Brigade through Magellan Holdings? What was the next step in Massive’s grand plan? That last one nagged at her. The followers they’d picked up in Sheridan and Nephi were aimless and, more often than not, confused. What did their leaders imagine they were going to do?
Eventually, they headed up a driveway where the Bureau had commandeered a house owned by an elderly couple who tended ten acres of soybeans. Outside, a dozen men and women, some in flak jackets and the rest in FBI windbreakers, talked on phones and conferred over tablet screens. Gonzales met the Suburban as they parked. He was younger than the commander in Sheridan, a leather-skinned crewcut with a pencil mustache. He pumped her hand, then pointed westward. “The target is one klick in that direction, and I’ve got twenty-three men with M-4s lying in the fields around it. No one has entered or exited the premises.”
“Any more sighted?”
“We’re up to nine, ma’am—three women, six men.”
“Let’s not waste any time, then.”
He took her into the house, and on the way said, “Sergeant Phillips is with your man at the vantage point, a half klick away.”
She stopped. “My man?”
“Owen Jakes, from Headquarters. He does work for you, yes?”
She tried to hide her surprise. “Of course. I just didn’t expect him to land so soon.”
In the claustrophobic living room, the farmer couple sat silently with cups of coffee, and she took a moment to thank them for their assistance. The husband stood on shaky legs and gave her a rigid salute. “I went to Vietnam for this country. This is the least I can do.”
Gonzales introduced her to the rest of the team in the kitchen, where a map of the area had been laid out on the dining table, surrounded by five rugged laptops with reinforced shells. They took her through the plans, and she tried to foresee disaster; given the flat terrain in this part of the country, everything looked bad. But there was nothing else to do. Unlike in Sheridan, she wasn’t going to walk up and knock on the door. She wanted to be alive to see Mittag arrested.
Then Owen Jakes entered the kitchen, and all eyes turned to him. He was rubbing his hands together when he noticed Rachel. “Agent Proulx. Good to see you.”
“Can we have a word, Owen?”
She walked him out the kitchen door to the back porch, into the cool, clear night, but before she could speak he launched into it. “Rachel, I’m not stepping on anything here, don’t worry. I was in Chicago when Paulson called me, and I lucked out with one of those new Gulfstreams that fly like the wind.”
His line caught her off guard. “When did Paulson call you?”
“Just after you talked to him, I guess. He wants to be sure there’s plenty of Bureau presence—which, now that I’m here, I totally get. They showed me the terrain, and it’s going to be tricky.”
The kitchen door opened, and Gonzales poked his head out. “Looks like fresh activity in the house—a bunch of them ran upstairs. It’s now or never.”
“Then I guess it’s now,” she said, and followed Gonzales inside. Once Jakes passed the threshold, she told everyone, “Agent Jakes will remain here. We don’t need a crowd out there.”
The insult flashed across Jakes’s face, but he recovered quickly. “Of course, ma’am.”
On the drive, she called Paulson and talked him through the plan. He shared her concern about the lack of natural cover, but he was eager to put an end to this. “It has to be done quickly,” he said. “No standoffs. Hit them hard. I don’t need a Waco on my watch.”
“Agreed,” she said, and glanced at Gonzales in the seat beside her, who was thumbing through messages on his phone. She lowered her voice. “Sir, why did you send Owen Jakes?”
“Is he making trouble?”
“No, it was just a surprise. It would’ve been nice to know beforehand.”
Silence, then: “He’d gotten in touch about some other matters, and so I told him he’d be more useful in South Dakota.”
“He said you called him.”
“He would, wouldn’t he?” Paulson said, then sighed. “You’re right, I should have informed you.”
She appreciated the apology. “Thank you, sir.”
“Now let’s do what we do best.”
Their approach was concealed by a blue barn flaking paint, and they joined another Suburban parked behind it. Gonzales introduced her to the local sheriff, Carl Donegal, who adjusted his flat cap and led them through the barn, past a foldout table where a technician kept check on two monitors, and on to an open window on the other side, which looked across a wide soybean field toward the house.
“Where’s that old boy?” Donegal asked as he handed her a pair of binoculars.
“Excuse me?”
“Jakes. He said he was coming back.”
“He’s not,” Rachel said, staring across the field. Two lights were on in the second floor of the farmhouse, but she couldn’t make anything out. “Think he’s a good old boy?”
“He’s from Kentucky. Least that’s what he told me.”
“Put him out of your mind.” She handed back the binoculars and headed to the table with the monitors. On display was infrared footage from cameras attached to two SWAT members’ helmets. From their positions, lying among the plants in the deep darkness, she saw two rocking chairs on the porch, which struck her as undeniably quaint. To Gonzales, she said, “Is everyone in place?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, then.” She checked her watch. “It’s one thirty-six, and we’re a go.”