A Triple Thriller Fest (29 page)

Frightened, the boy lay down on the floor as the second serviceman came in the back door, gun drawn and ready.

“Whada’ya want? We ain’t got nothing here,” the woman protested, her voice thick with a smoker’s rasp.

“Shut up!” the driver said as he handcuffed the boy and motioned again for the woman to sit at the kitchen table. “Check the cellar, Jack,” the driver said to the second man.

“I did. The entrance is behind the cabin. Full of weapons, just like we thought, but no one else seems to be around.”

“Then I guess our intel was straight. It’s about time one of these raids went off without a hitch. Call it in.”

“Right,” he said, exiting the front door and heading for the truck. Reaching through the passenger door, he grabbed the mike on the radio and keyed the transmitter, generating a blast of static. “Bugle Base, Bugle Base, this is 205.” More static followed, and he adjusted the gain.

“205, this is Bugle Base, go ahead.”

“Bugle Base, 205 in place. Gold strike, I repeat, gold strike. No resistance, target secure, two suspects and two young children in custody. Over.”

“Roger, 205, I copy gold strike. Strike team
en route
. ETA, forty minutes. Out.”

“Bugle Base, 205. Copy, out.” He replaced the mike and went back into the cabin. “Forty minutes. I’ll start the inventory, and you check for documents.”

“Right. Slam dunk, but where’s the man of the family?”

“Well, we got the weapons, and maybe one of ’em will match the hit pieces from the ambush.”

“Not a chance. They’ve ditched those long ago.”

“Yeah, probably.”

* * *

Four civilian models of the military Humvee and two Chevy Suburban 4x4s occupied most of the rear section of the interstate rest area. They were surrounded by twenty-two agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Signs closing the rest stop were posted at the entrance. The irony of the agents coordinating their final assault plans in the area marked with a sign that read “Pet Rest Area – Please Pick Up Leavings” had not occurred to anyone in the group.

“Okay, listen up,” Agent-in-Charge Claude Riker said, gathering his men together for the final briefing. “The point team has arrived and secured the area, with two suspects, a woman and a boy, plus two kids in custody. Air One reports no ground activity nearby. A weapons cache is confirmed. I repeat, gold strike is confirmed.”

A chorus of cheers went up from the gathered agents, releasing the frustration that had built up over weeks of intelligence gathering following the two daylight attacks and the murders of their fellow agents.

“It appears as if our tips were legit, and this time we’ve got the animals. The point team marked the turnoff with orange markers on two trees, either side of the road. Let’s hit it. Keep your interval and stay sharp. The rest of this group could show up at any time. But I think we caught these guys with their pants down. Alison, you lead in your Suburban, the Humvees in the middle, and Juan, you bring up the rear.”

Twenty-five minutes later, after exiting the interstate into the Lassen National Forest, the caravan reached the orange-marked trees and turned northwest. After traveling two miles up the road, Riker, in the second vehicle, turned to check the trailing vehicles. At that moment, an explosion shattered the stillness of the forest road. Jerking back to the front, he watched in shock as the lead vehicle rolled over from the blast, coming to a stop in a drainage ditch on the right side of the road. Instantly, Riker got on the radio, set for the local net.

“Ambush! Ambush! Back up,
now!”
he shouted.

The second car had come to a halt, but the five other vehicles closed up like an accordion within ten yards of each other following the blast. Agent Middleton, driving the last car, began to spin his tires in an effort to back up, but another, smaller detonation occurred just off the road, and a large tree fell solidly across the dirt trail behind his vehicle, effectively blocking the convoy’s exit. Small-arms fire commenced from the hillside to their left and began to impact the driver’s side of all the vehicles.

Air One, which had been shadowing the convoy in a Bell helicopter, tried to contact Riker by radio, but the occupants of Riker’s car had exited the passenger side, away from the firing, as had the occupants of the other vehicles. Those in the overturned vehicle who were able rapidly scrambled out the driver’s window while under fire from the hillside.

In the process of switching frequencies to report the attack to central communication in San Francisco, Air One never saw the Stinger missile, fired from an eight o’clock position. The pilot was killed instantly by the impact and spared the sensation of falling from six hundred feet as his aircraft disintegrated around him. His spotter was less fortunate and went screaming to his death.

Small-arms fire continued against the left side of the stalled vehicles, all empty now, with the seventeen remaining agents lying protected for the moment, shielded by their vehicles and the shallow ditch into which they had scrambled when the shooting began. Riker motioned to his second in command, about ten men down the line in the ditch. The man crawled to Riker’s side.

“They seem to be concentrated on that small ridge on the other side of the cars,” he shouted. “Maybe we can filter into the woods behind us. I’ll stay here with several men to cover, and you find better positions in the woods,” he instructed.

From his vantage point on a small rise, located about eighty yards from the cluster of cars, Jackson Shaw, Shasta Brigade commander, watched the scene below. He looked over to his right and got a thumbs-up from his demolition team. Nodding his approval, he gave little thought to the seventeen men who would die in the ensuing thirty seconds as the detonation cord, lining the ditch into which the ambush had funneled the surviving agents, exploded. The blast severed body parts on many of the agents, and all—men and women alike—were grievously wounded. Some died instantly. Others bled to death more slowly. In less than four minutes, twenty-two ATF agents on the ground and two in the air were dead, without word of the ambush having reached the central command, other than the initial report, which had declared the target secure and four suspects in custody.

Following a brief radio contact from Shaw, five men of the Shasta Brigade who had not been involved in the ambush stealthily approached the remote cabin holding the small-arms cache—three from the front and two from the rear. On signal, they kicked in the doors and assaulted the two agents holding the woman and sixteen-year-old Timothy Castleton. The previous twenty minutes had been slightly uncomfortable for Timothy, who had been forced to lie on his stomach, his arms handcuffed behind his back.

When the door flew open, the first agent reached for his weapon with quick reflexes, but not fast enough to avoid the three nine-millimeter slugs that entered his body and neck from the first brigade man through the door. The second agent raised his hands in surrender and lived for an additional two minutes—long enough to be taken outside, where he received a bullet to the back of the head, point blank.

Captain Roger Dahlgren, who also served as Woodland’s city manager, led the small contingent of men at the cabin. He ordered two of the men to load the dead agents’ bodies into their truck and take them to the ambush site. With two other men, he then entered the cabin.

“Get the weapons out of the cellar, fast,” he said as they entered the house.

“You got my money?” the woman said, recognizing Dahlgren as the man who had first met with her.

“We’ll take care of you, not to worry,” he said.

“You said we’d be here two days, three at most. It’s been near on to a week. I want more money,” she said.

“Shut up. I said you’d be taken care of. Tim,” he said to the young boy, “you’ve done a fine job here. Help load out the weapons and then get out.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied.

In ten minutes, two of the vehicles were gone, one with weapons loaded under a thick tarpaulin and one with two dead ATF agents bouncing in the truck bed. Only Captain Dahlgren remained, his Jeep Cherokee parked over the crest of a hill behind the cabin.

“Get your purse, and I’ll take you back into Redding,” he said to the woman.

As she turned to pick it up, without hesitation, Dahlgren fired a shot into the back of her head, instantly dropping her to the floor. He looked for a moment at the two smaller children, both too young to be aware of what had transpired. From the pocket of his jacket, he retrieved a small bottle of clear fluid and a wad of gauze wrapping. He poured the contents of the bottle onto the gauze and held the cloth over the nose and mouth of each child in turn, laying them gently on the floor of the cabin next to their mother. His last act was to sprinkle the floor of the cabin with liberal amounts of gasoline from a two-gallon can that had been stashed behind the cabin. Outside, he turned, looked over the cabin once more, and threw a match through the front door. The flames immediately swept throughout the small, dry, wooden structure.

Back at the ambush scene, brigade members salvaged radios, automatic weapons, and assorted ATF gear from the disabled vehicles. Commander Shaw, one task left to perform, motioned for Steve Turner, who jogged over to his side.

“Yeah, Commander?”

“Steve, get behind the wheel of that second vehicle and check the glove box for anything of interest. The team leader was in that car.”

“Right,” Steve replied. Shaw and First Sergeant Krueger followed Steve to the car and stood by as he slid over the seat toward the glove box. When Shaw slammed the driver’s door, Steve jerked upright and looked toward Shaw, who was glaring down at him.

“What are you doing?” Steve said.

“A good
logger,”
Shaw said, emphasizing the term, “should be careful in the woods, don’t you think, Steve?” At the mention of his code name, FBI Agent Alex Hunter, who had worked undercover within the Shasta Brigade for nearly a year, reached for his weapon, but Commander Jackson Shaw quickly triggered two rounds into the side of his head, then reached in to grab him by the collar and shove him forward against the steering wheel before pinning a California bear flag on his collar. Turning to Krueger, who was clearly surprised by the event that had just taken place, Shaw gave the order: “Clear out, First Sergeant. We’re through here.”

“Yes, sir,” Krueger replied, glancing once more at the lifeless body of Steve—or whatever his name was.

Shaw stood silently for a few moments, looking up at the sunlight filtering through the heavy stand of trees alongside the mountain trail. The woods were beautiful, tranquil, and they provided relief from the confines and confusion of the city. As he watched the smoke from the action slowly rise and dissipate, the acrid odor of cordite heavy in the air, he gave one further glance to the carnage strewn over the trail and turned to leave.

The Shasta Brigade, acting on orders from Commander Jackson Shaw, had planned, deployed, and then trapped and killed twenty-six agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms—all without having a man wounded. Shaw had also dealt with one undercover FBI agent whose cover had been blown by Grant Sully, deputy director of operations for the CIA, in his back-channel report to the brigade. The entire platoon was gone in twenty minutes. The only sound remaining in the forest was the radio in Riker’s vehicle, repeating at frequent intervals, “Bugle Base, Bugle Base, this is ATF Central, do you copy? Over.”

* * *

“Good evening. I’m Paul Spackman, and welcome to the Six O’ Clock Eyewitness News. Another brazen daylight attack was perpetrated today on agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Twenty-six agents were gunned down in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of Red Bluff in what appears to have been a military-style ambush. From initial reports submitted by the sheriff’s department in Lassen County, the ATF agents were returning from a raid on a suspected weapons cache, and in the process of that raid, they burned a remote cabin in the high Sierras to the ground. Inside the cabin were the charred remains of a woman and two infant children,” Spackman said, shaking his head in a gesture of sadness.

“In a terse message left on this reporter’s voice mail, a caller identifying himself as a representative of the Western Patriot Movement claimed that the attack on the agents was in retaliation for the horrendous act committed against the woman and her children, who lived alone, unarmed, in their solitary cabin in the mountains.

“In a related news story today, thirty-eight of California’s fifty-two members of Congress filed a joint-action suit with the United States Supreme Court, seeking the court’s determination that the recent secession election was unconstitutional and should be overturned. We have a further report on today’s startling developments from our field correspondent, Janice Strickland, who will provide additional information. That report in a moment …”

* * *

Watching the evening news from his corporate suite in downtown San Francisco, John Henry Franklin leaned back in his chair and contemplated with satisfaction the endless possibilities this new direction offered. Whatever the U.S. Supreme Court might say wouldn’t really matter. The die had been cast. The Franklin Group had already conducted negotiations with Japanese and Korean corporate and labor leaders, paid the necessary “consideration fees,” and had received assurance of political acceptance. The Mexican government, with the intervention of General Valdez, had also promised immediate recognition of the Republic of California.

Franklin thought back to when General Valdez had first approached him, nearly twelve years before, with his scheme to provide an immigrant labor force. It was an ingenious plan, but limited in scope, until Franklin put his vast resources behind it. Valdez had thought to bring in thousands, but under Franklin’s planning it had grown to tens of thousands, and then nearly a half-million migrant workers in all aspects of menial labor throughout the western United States.