Gideon's War/Hard Target (33 page)

Then the hog settled down on the ground as though for a nap. It closed its eye again. And with that, it died.

The fletching of the arrow protruded no more than five inches from its chest. The arrow had gone straight through its heart.

For a moment there was no sound. Tillman struggled to his knees. Around him the circle of leaderless pigs stared at him momentarily, then whirled and were gone.

Tillman tried to get to his feet. But he was suddenly so tired that he couldn’t even stand. A part of his brain recognized this as the adrenaline dump that occurs after combat, forcing the body to shut down until it regains equilibrium. When that happens, he knew, there’s no fighting it.

So he rolled over and leaned against the hot, bloody flank of the old pig. The bristles prickled his flesh as he patted the dead beast on its great head.

He wanted to say something appropriate, to offer up some benediction that would sum up the old boar’s life and dignify its magnificent death. But Tillman had never been a man of words particularly. His brother had gotten all theigÑ€†e flowery-benediction genes.

“You look like shit,” a voice said, interrupting his weary rumination.

He looked up and saw a man standing about twenty yards away.

“You asshole,” Tillman said, closing his eyes. “You spooked my goddamn hog.”

“Is that any way to greet your brother?” Gideon said.

9

ANDERSON, WEST VIRGINIA

Gideon returned from Tillman’s bathroom with a military surplus first-aid kit and began cleaning and dressing the wound on his brother’s leg. It was a bad gash, one that probably should have been closed with a couple dozen stitches. The blood—half-dried and caked with dirt—ran down into Tillman’s boot. Gideon swabbed out the wound with alcohol while Tillman lay rigid with his eyes closed, not even making a noise. Then he spread some antibacterial cream, jury-rigged a series of butterfly bandages, and wrapped the whole oozing mess up in gauze.

When he was finished, Gideon looked around the bare little room. It was lit by two oil lamps. The walls were unpainted, decorated only by a gun rack containing four rifles and a shotgun. The kitchen consisted of a camp stove and an oven made from the top third of an oil drum. There was scarcely any evidence of personal possessions at all. It saddened him to see that Tillman’s life had been boiled down to this. It was beyond mere poverty, beyond spartan. It had the look of a penitent’s chamber.

Tillman himself didn’t look much better. Although he was shorter and more muscular than Gideon, he looked dirty, dried out, and clearly exhausted. Gideon felt a heavy twinge of guilt. Guilt . . . and sadness. Two years earlier, his brother had been made a scapegoat for a lot of things that weren’t his fault. Gideon had promised to keep him out of trouble. And had failed to keep his promise. Yet Tillman would never know just how much personal and political capital Gideon had spent for him. There were people in Washington who would have left him to rot in jail for the rest of his life. If it hadn’t been for Gideon, they probably would have. Still, Gideon couldn’t help feeling responsible for where Tillman had ended up.

For a moment Gideon considered driving back to D.C. Mixon wasn’t Tillman’s problem.

But before he had a chance to make the decision, Tillman’s eyes flicked open. “Come on, Gideon,” he said. “You didn’t drive all the way out here to help me field dress that hog. Tell me what you want.”

Gideon eyed his brother for a moment. “A while back you told me about a group of Nazi-type guys who live around here. You said you’d had some dealings with them.”

Tillman grunted. “Not Nazis. Militia.”

“Okay. You said these guys had contacted you several times, said they knew who you were, and that they tried to recruit you for their group. You said they figured you for a like-minded kind of guy.”

Gideon explained everything that had happened until now.

⊸ T‡When his brother finished telling him about Mixon, Nancy Clement, and the domestic terror attack he believed Verhoven might be part of, Tillman sighed and peeled himself off the bed like a piece of adhesive tape.

“Bullshit.”

“Why do you say that?” Gideon said.

Tillman ran his hands wearily through his hair and leaned forward. “Will you let me get some sleep if I explain what’s really going on at Verhoven’s place, and why he’s not trying to blow up a bunch of innocent people?”

“Fair enough.”

“Let me school you here, lay a little prison knowledge on you about the far reaches of right-wing craziness in America.” He extended his right arm straight out from his body and waggled the fingers of his hand. “Way out here on the far end you’ve got Nazis and the skinheads and Christian Identity—all the white power people. You’ve also got the Aryan Brotherhood, which is really a criminal gang operating out of penitentiaries but that shares the same philosophy about racial politics with the other white-power types.

“A step or two closer to the mainstream, you’ve got the militia people. Some of them have some cross talk with the Nazis and the racists and the Christian Identity guys. But most don’t. Some of the militias are guys I can talk to. Basically they’re armed libertarians, constitutional fundamentalists, Second Amendment guys, gun guys, folks who are tired of taking shit from the US government. Every few weekends they like to stomp around out in the bushes with black rifles and camo face paint. Basically harmless shit-talkers.”

“Okay, so what about Verhoven?”

Tillman smiled thinly. “Supposedly he talks a good game about how America was built by Constitution-loving Protestants and how we’ve lost our way and this and that, how his people need to arm for some kind of big confrontation with the government, storm troopers coming out to take their guns away, whatever. But as far as I can tell, it’s just window dressing. Politics is not what he’s into. Not really.”

“What is he into, then?”

“Pharmaceuticals. Mostly crystal meth.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“Everybody around here knows it. He’s a large-scale manufacturer. He distributes weight, mostly through biker gangs and skinheads.”

“How is it that this is common knowledge and they don’t get caught?”

“From what I hear, Verhoven’s grandfather was a big-time moonshiner—and, by the way, sheriff of Hertford County. It’s a tradition around here. Long as you don’t bother other people, nobody’s gonna rat you out to the Feds.”

Tillman felt a creeping unease. Had he put his money on a lame horse? What if Mixon turned out to be exactly what Ray Dahlgren claimed he was. “So you’re saying—”

“Again, I’m just talking hearsay from people I’ve spoken to around here. But supposedly he runs the militia group as a nonprofit, which gives him tax-exempt status. The ideology gives him a pitch to use w221ဆhen he’s recruiting muscle out of prison. He keeps all these armed guys around for security so he won’t get ripped off. Does he believe any of his militia BS? Maybe. But at the end of the day, he’s a businessman. He’s in it for the money. So why would he want to set off a bomb in Times Square? It’s bad for business.”

Gideon leaned toward his brother. “Look, I may be barking up the wrong tree. But I think there may be something here.” He explained about Mixon, how he believed that a plot to take out the government was being hatched at Jim Verhoven’s compound.

When he was done talking, Tillman looked at him and shrugged. “And?”

“You once told me some of the guys in this militia group knew what you’d been through, and wanted you to join their group. I was hoping you could reach out to them, visit their compound, see if Mixon is there. If he is, just let me know and I’ll pass the word on to the FBI.”

Tillman looked disgusted. “Why should I help the federal government? So they can lock me up in jail again?” Tillman stood up, took off his shirt, and draped it over the end of his bed. “Get off my bed, man, I’m tired.”

Gideon stood. Tillman lay down and grunted wearily.

“Will you do it, Tillman?”

“Sounds like a wild-goose chase.”

“If it isn’t, a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt.”

“I know you don’t owe the federal government anything. But you owe me.”

Gideon let that sink in before he continued. “You know what I did for you. You could be dead now. Or still in prison.”

Tillman had twenty pounds on Gideon, but lying in his bed he looked smaller, diminished somehow. He squinted back up at Gideon with one open eye.

“What does Kate think about this?”

“This has nothing to do with her.” Gideon heard his own voice sounding a little too insistent.

“She know you’re here?”

“Of course she knows. She says hello.”

“If I were you, bro, I’d be back in that nice house cozied up next to my very fine woman.”

“After we check this out.”

“All right. Whatever. I’ll go poke around in the morning. But then we’re square.” He turned over, face to the wall. “Now can I go to sleep?”

Gideon went to his car and came back with a duffel bag filled with mil spec communications equipment he’d cadged off Nancy Clement.

By the time he’d unpacked the equipment, Tillman was already snoring.

10f IIII d‡

POCATELLO, IDAHO

How close are we?” Wilmot asked.

Collier stood with Wilmot on the balcony overlooking the twenty-thousand-acre Wilmot property. In the distance the Bitterroot Mountains rose out of the snowy white expanse of forest. A thin blue ribbon of river wound through the valley between them. A small plume of steam rising in the distance was the only indication of the existence of the cassava processing factory.

“Close,” Collier said.

They stood silently for a while. Below them the now unused paddocks sprawled down toward the barns, which had once been full of beautiful horses. Collier sensed it was an emotional moment for Wilmot.

“I worked very hard to build this place,” Wilmot said. “It’s not easy to leave it behind.”

“You’ll be leaving a legacy that’s a lot bigger than all this,” Collier said.

Before Wilmot could respond, there was a noise from the treeline below. A hundred yards away, a figure burst out of the white woods, running furiously toward the house. It was one of the Congolese women. Amalie, the troublemaker, who’d been bothering him about Christiane.

“S’il vous plaît!” the woman yelled as she continued to charge through the snow toward the house. “S’il vous plaît!”

Wilmot took Collier’s arm in one of his powerful paws, gave it a painful squeeze. “Go down there and handle this, John,” he said. “It’s time.”

“Yes, sir!”

Collier walked briskly back into the house. As he did, he passed Evan wheeling himself in the opposite direction. He sprinted as soon as he got out of Evan’s view. By the time he reached the ground floor of the house, he could hear banging on the front door. He ran through the kitchen, pausing at the refrigerator to pull a small red cardboard box out of the butter tray, which he stuffed in the pocket of his parka.

Then he threw open the front door, where he found Amalie standing on the front porch. Her eyes widened, as though she had expected someone other than Collier to be standing there.

“Bonjour, ca va?” Collier said, smiling. “My goodness, what seems to be the problem?”

Evan had rolled his motorized wheelchair as close to the railing as possible. He was feeling very sore, now that he had been off the painkillers for a while. The pain was sharp and crisp, like the air. But in an odd way it didn’t feel all that objectionable.

“What the hell is going on, Dad?” he asked. “Who’s that?”

Down below them John Collier was leading a thin, pretty black woman toward the stables.

Evan’s father looked intently into Evan’s face. “You look different today,” he said. “How come?”

Evan didn’t tell his father he had stopped taking his pills. He needed to focus, to se clñ€†e things without the haze of the drugs. If his father was involved in something, Evan didn’t want to raise his suspicions.

“Seriously,” he said. “Who is that woman? What are you and John doing in the woods?”

“John’s an extraordinary young man,” Wilmot said. “Brilliant, actually. He’s been developing a new method of alternative energy production—ethanol from wood pulp. You know how much wood pulp waste we produce here. I thought I’d bring him out here, fund his little project, see where it went.”

“So he’s running some kind of factory out there in the woods?”

Wilmot nodded. “Labor’s a little tight around here right now. A bunch of Congolese women showed up in Coeur d’Alene last year, escaping from the genocide in eastern Congo. I hired them to help John out.”

“I was wondering,” Evan said. “When I found John here . . . well, I found it odd that you hired him to take care of me.”

“He’s your friend, isn’t he?” Wilmot said sharply. “You’ve known him since he was this high.” Evan’s father held his hand two feet off the ground.

Evan didn’t say anything. John was pleasant enough to Evan, and was always scrupulous in his duties. But Evan understood people. He was pretty sure John Collier resented him as much as ever.

Wilmot put his arm around Evan. It felt nice. He knew his father loved him . . . but he wasn’t an effusive or emotional guy. “You’re going to get cold out here, son.”

“I’m fine. Feels good, actually.”

His father squeezed his shoulder. He seemed uncharacteristically meditative. Ordinarily he was in constant motion, always doing something, directing somebody, driving forward, pressing on.

“Let’s get you back inside before you catch a cold,” he said, stepping behind the wheelchair and pushing it back inside without waiting for Evan’s consent.

For months there had been whispered conversations between Collier and his father, sudden changes in their demeanor when he rolled into a room. Somewhere in the back of his doped-up brain, he’d been dimly aware of their strange behavior, but now that he was feeling clearheaded, he felt like he was being whacked in the face with it. Now, as his father pushed him back into the warmth of the house, Evan felt more sure than ever that something was wrong. Why would his father hire a bunch of African women who didn’t speak English to work at an experimental ethanol plant in the middle of the Idaho woods when there were plenty of local out-of-work loggers who would gladly do hard work for shit pay?

Although it had wrecked his body, Evan remained proud of his service to his country. But Evan’s sacrifice had changed his father, turned him from an outspoken isolationist into someone whose quiet anger ran deeper than Evan could fathom. Now, Evan was determined to find out what he and Collier were up to.

Keeping his sudden resolve to himself, Evan pushed the joystick, steering the wheelchair away from his father. “See you later, Dad.”

“Where is Christiane?” Amalie demandeh tñ€†d. “You say everything is fine but you won’t show me Christiane!”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll take you to her. Will you calm down if I promise to take you to her?” He shepherded Amalie down the semicircular driveway in front of the massive Wilmot house. He had been planning to deal with her in the barn. But he could see that wasn’t going to work. She was still too agitated.

“Let’s get in the car,” he said, placing a hand on her arm.

She yanked her arm free of his hand and glared at him.

“Do you want me to take you, or not?”

After a moment, she nodded tensely and walked to Collier’s F-150.

Collier sighed loudly and looked back over his shoulder. He wanted to make sure that he didn’t do anything Mr. Wilmot would disapprove of.

Evan and Wilmot were still up on the balcony, looking down at him.

The sight of Wilmot with his arm around Evan’s shoulder was like a knife twisting in his gut. Collier was not the sort of person to spend a lot of time reflecting on the past. But he couldn’t help thinking about the time he’d left this place.

It had been an ugly thing. And only Wilmot knew the whole story.

John Collier had been born right here on the property. His mother had been Evan’s babysitter and housekeeper.

It was never clear who Collier’s father was. His mother wouldn’t say. And she’d died before he wormed the truth out of her. As a kid, Collier had occasionally fantasized that Wilmot himself was his father. But the older he got, the less plausible that seemed. Where Dale Wilmot was big and strong and rawboned and square jawed, Collier was small and delicate and thin, with fine, almost elfin features, and red hair. Since Collier’s mother was none of these things, it could only be that he’d gotten these qualities from his father.

Still, growing up fatherless on the estate, he couldn’t help but look toward Wilmot as a father figure. There had been no other candidate—unless you included Arne Szellenborg, the Wilmot family butler/gardener/whatever, who was queer as a three-dollar bill and had a barely hidden drinking problem.

Wilmot had intermittently recognized Collier’s talents—rewarding him with a watch or a BB gun when he won the spelling bee or the science fair. But Wilmot’s attention to Collier had always been offhanded, a bone thrown to the help.

And so John Collier had grown up in the shadow of Evan.

Evan, the golden boy. Evan, the perfect son. Evan, in whom Dale Wilmot had clearly placed all his hope for the future.

And Evan, the son of a bitch, was worthy of those hopes. Where Wilmot was handsome in a slightly brutal way, Evan was downright beautiful, his features chiseled and fine boned. Where Wilmot had earned a football scholarship at U of I based on his relentlessness and competitive spirit (and possibly on his cruelty), Evan had won trophy after trophy on pure grace, on an ability to run distances without tiring, on a gift for sensing holes in the defensive line and snaking through for impossible eight- and ten- and fifteen-yard gains. Where Wilmot saw men as Andñ€†tools he could pluck from a box and manipulate, Evan had a genuine interest in people. He was a leader because people wanted him to like them, not because he calculated the advantage he might gain from them. It was only in school that Collier could offer Evan any competition at all. In every class, Evan Wilmot was first and John Collier was second. Except science and math, where it was the other way around.

Three weeks before Evan’s eighteenth birthday, he had won the state dressage championships down in Nampa in his age range. And so, for his birthday, Wilmot had given his son a $75,000 horse.

Collier’s birthday, as it happened, fell only two days later. Wilmot got him a $500 gift certificate to Radio Shack.

The disparity had chafed at Collier. Every day he’d gotten out of bed, looked out the window of the little house where he and his mom lived. He’d hear the sound of his mother hacking and coughing as she cleared her lungs with a first cigarette, and look out the window at the ring where Evan was already busy working with his horse. Rising up behind the paddock was the Wilmot house. Like everything that touched Wilmot, it was a reflection of the man himself. At first glance the house looked like any other large pseudo-rustic post-and-beam house that you might find throughout the western mountains of the United States. It was only after a certain amount of comparison between the building and its foreground that you realized just how massive it was. It had a sort of sham humility that was not supposed to fool you but to give off the message: “See, I’m just like you. Normal, no frills, salt-of-the-earth, jeans-and-work boots. Except vastly superior to you in every aspect.”

Collier watched Evan canter and then gallop, practicing jump after jump. Collier was allowed to ride the horses on occasion, so he knew just how beautifully Evan rode. It was early, not yet hot, but Evan had already taken his shirt off. A thin sheen of sweat covered his perfectly proportioned torso.

After a moment Collier saw a figure appear on the balcony of the Wilmot home. It was Dale Wilmot himself, wearing a bathrobe. He stared down at his son for a long time. Evan couldn’t see his face. But he didn’t need to. It was evident in every motion of Wilmot’s body—a sense of pride and accomplishment. This is mine. My land, my house, my timber, my view . . . my perfect son.

The rage spilled through Collier like a fountain of acid. No matter what he did, no matter what he achieved, no matter where he went in life, there would never be a father who would look at him the way Wilmot looked at Evan. Never.

Collier had a chemistry lab set up in the garage. He had started it in elementary school and over the years accumulated a decent supply of beakers and test tubes, pipettes, jars of chemicals, a small centrifuge, a Bunsen burner, and an autoclave. If he wasn’t working on schoolwork, he was performing chemistry experiments. Always an unhappy child, Collier found something in the lab that approached joy. The sense of power as the chemicals coalesced and changed. The exactitude, care, and precision that was so unlike the messiness of life. All of the giggling phoniness of the girls, the cruelty of the PE coaches, the idiocy of the school administrators, the stupidity of the boys—all of them playing by rules he couldn’t fathom. His childhood had been one misery after another.

But he understood the chemicals. If it was possible, he even loved them. The drip-drip of titration, the sensitivity to temperature and pressure, the dance of catalyst, ofñ€† reactant, and reagent, the beauty of the arrows that said this plus this yields this.

After watching Evan ride the horse for nearly an hour, Collier went into the garage and worked for six hours straight. To produce what he produced—without causing an explosion, without poisoning himself on the waste gases, without ruining the batch and producing some placid beaker of worthless sludge—required total concentration.

In the end, the chemistry worked perfectly. But everything else had fallen apart.

He concocted a poison to put in the horse’s feed bag. He’d practiced on other animals over the years, but this one was specifically designed to cause the horse a maximum of pain. The dose, too, had been precisely calculated. Just enough to kill the horse. But not enough to do it quickly.

He had soaked the oats in the poison, then put the feed bag in the stall. The horse had sniffed at the bag, and for a moment Collier had thought the horse wouldn’t eat it, that something about the odorless chemical would alert the sensitive nose of the horse.