Later that morning the sun seemed to shine brighter and the air seemed clearer. Not so much cleansing, but at least refreshing. Nevertheless, the images they’d seen on the tape, like acid, had etched their awfulness permanently on their minds. Fortified one way or another, pancakes, strong coffee, or whiskey, all four had managed to compartmentalize them sufficiently to allow them to move on. Ike made the call that would set into motion the steps that should bring the nightmare he and Ruth had endured for the last week and a half to a close. Ruth handed him a final cup of coffee which he drank without tasting.
“Okay, Sheriff, what happens now?”
“We make the calls. We gear up. We…where’s Karl and Sam?”
“They are huddling inside. I think Karl is being protective and Sam reminding him she was a cop before she was a NSA nerd and is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She’s cleaning her weapon.”
“And you?”
“Gunplay is my least enjoyable pastime, as you know, although we did have some good times back in Maine.”
“Which is why we are sitting here wearing wigs and bad haberdashery instead of enjoying a nice luncheon back home at the Crossroads Diner.”
“Point taken. Every party has some cleaning up to do afterwards. We forgot to check on that. Let’s not make the same mistake today. As for me, I think I will watch from afar, if that is all right with you.”
“My preference. You might want to have a chat with Pangborn if the occasion arises. Also, we need to pack up before we go. When this goes down, I want to be able to walk away from here without a trace. The Gottliebs need to vanish.”
“We could burn the place down.”
“Over the top. I think a good swabbing out and polishing of obvious surfaces for fingerprints will do.”
“Finish your calls. I’ll start applying the mop.”
***
Martin Pangborn did not like to be awakened early when he was on vacation. Anyone with the temerity to attempt it had better have a good reason to do so or that person’s future as an employee would not last much longer.
“What? This had better be good. What do I need to know at this ungodly hour?” he said and sat up. “Where’s my coffee? What do you want?”
“They have Brattan.”
“Who has Brattan?”
“The BOLO, remember. Well, some police force in rural Virginia picked him up and has him locked up.”
“Rural? Where exactly?”
“You’re not going to like this, sir, but it’s Picketsville. That’s where—”
“I know where the hell that is and before you ask, yes, I know who used to be the sheriff there. So, they think they can squeeze Brattan? He won’t talk. He knows better.”
“They’re saying he might make a deal. They say they have him on murder one, you know, the cop, Frieze. That’s a capital offense. If they reduce it to something less, he might, you know, want to talk…not that he knows anything that could hurt you, of course. He doesn’t, does he?”
“No. Who the hell is ‘they’ and who do we have in the area?”
“It’s just rumor, maybe, but who can say? Maybe the cops back there are spreading it to smoke out something else. We don’t have anyone close anymore because of the Frieze thing.”
“Get me Harrison on the phone and wake up the senator. It’s time he got the hell out of here. He doesn’t need to know what comes next.”
Pangborn dressed and hustled a sleepy and disheveled Oswald Connors to the helicopter. It lifted off in a whirl of dust and carried a very relieved senator off to Boise. Next, he picked up the phone intending to set up an intercept in Picketsville. He was busy shouting at the person on the other end of the line when he was told about an unusual gathering of law enforcement vehicles in the area.
“Not my problem. I own the locals and if anything was up, I’d know. Now leave me alone. I have work to do.” He was still at it when the police arrived.
***
It took longer than Ike expected to get the State Police on board. Their director, as did many of his counterparts across the country, had a reluctance, born of prior experiences, to deal with or accept advice from the federal government. He said he’d listen to what Ike had to say but sounded skeptical. Only after Ike had forwarded a portion of the tape to his cell phone, did the colonel finally pull up to the cabin and meet with Ike. It took another hour and several more phone calls to recount the whole story—how Ike and Ruth came to be in Idaho, what the connection was between them and the ranch and, finally, to map out a plan to take the operation down.
“That’s a helluva story, Sheriff. If I didn’t know the director of the Central Intelligence Agency personally, I’d say you were nuts and have you in my jail for disturbing the peace, not to mention doing business as a realtor without a license. Health inspectors? Really? So, you have this tape. How’d you get it? Never mind, I don’t want to know. Son of a bitch. I heard some talk about the senator, but Pangborn? Jesus. You know some fancy lawyer will have it suppressed as evidence even if we go in there and bust him.”
“I do and I don’t care. I don’t see this getting that far. Civil suits by families, maybe, but I think it is more likely to find its way into the anonymous media stream that seems to rule the news now. TMZ, YouTube, and I don’t know where else. I expect once it gets loose it will go viral. There will be no stopping it.”
“That is a very mean and nasty thing to do to one of America’s more prominent citizens and friend of the former president. I like it.”
“I hoped you would.”
“I have to tell you, Martin Pangborn has been a pain in my rear for years. He has friends in high places. But you already knew that. Anyway, his friends, that is to say politicians whose election campaigns he helps fund, are after me all the time to turn a blind eye to this or that, especially that bunch of idiots in his so called militia out there at the ranch. They scare the daylights out of the folks hereabouts with their damned guns and crap.”
“Glad to find a kindred spirit, Director.”
“Yeah, and he tried to get me ousted from my job. Do you believe that? He leaned on the governor pretty hard. I guess he thought he had something on the governor. But the governor has no love for Pangborn so it didn’t work. He probably found out that Pangborn funded his opponent in the last election, or something. Besides there’d be too many questions asked if I were pushed out without something big to justify it. Lord knows they tried, though. I’ve had a private snoop on my case for over a year. Tapped my phone—the works.”
“But he failed.”
“Yep. Okay, let’s put this thing together. I’m going to enjoy this.” He pulled his phone off his belt and began making calls. Ike packed his car and briefed the other three.
“We missed a helicopter leaving,” the State Police director yelled at Ike. “Who do you think left?”
“I hope it was just the senator. If Pangborn slipped the noose, this is going to be way more difficult. We’ll find out soon enough.”
Over the course of the next hour and a half, police cars began assembling on the several side roads near the ranch. A correctional facilities bus, equipped with mesh-screened windows joined them, as did several standard school busses and an armored personnel carrier. At three in the afternoon, a front-end loader fitted with a chain hoist lumbered down the road to the ranch followed by a flatbed truck carrying the sort of steel plates used to cover trenches during road repair. The crew monitoring the television surveillance in the ranch house watched astonished as the loader operator lifted them in turn and dropped them over the stop spikes in the “cattle guard” that secured the entrance to the ranch. The moment it finished and backed away, a stream of police cruisers, busses, led by the armored personnel carrier with its complement of SWAT officers, smashed through the gate and rumbled into the ranch.