Leon Uris (24 page)

And came the final humiliation, of exiling AMERIGUN to a puny reconverted hundred-year-old hotel. The Alamo! He had named it, and the Alamo would be heard from again.

King stared out to the land sloping down from the Alamo. He had plans of his own for the acreage he’d optioned all around. One day the Alamo would be the center of an AMERIGUN heritage park!

Great battles of our history would be reenacted. He, King Porter, would lead the first charge up San Juan Hill.
Charge!

Kiddie rides on trains or a river would take them through virtual battlefields; Belleau Wood, the Normandy invasion, Iwo Jima, where a kid could plant a flag, Yorktown, and well…even Gettysburg.

And…and…and the Hall of the Great Gunfighters. For a dollar a kid could buckle up and fast-draw with a laser pistol against Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and…and…and…Doc Holliday.

And…and…a very subdued, shrouded building depicting the demise of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd and a scad of Mafia gangsters including Capone and…and the guy in the Texas tower sniping people on the ground…

And the heroes, the buffalo hunters and men who tamed Indians and the West. John Wayne, Jesse James, Davy Crockett!

And the kids could buy a replica only at the museum store with a host of AMERIGUN knives and grenades and pistols. And the crowning glory would be an amphitheater which would give a nightly replay of the Alamo!

DENVER, 2002–2003

Governor O’Connell stood as a lone pine in a burned-out forest. The Republican sweep took the statehouse in Denver and a majority of the national delegation to Washington.

Tuesday follows Monday. Quinn awoke to the reality that a sensible gun-control law didn’t have a chance. He would take his time, build bipartisan coalitions, push the easy legislation first. Once he had a sense of his statehouse, he might unwrap his gun-control bill. That would be a year off, anyhow.

Quinn did not face automatic Quinn haters. His father had been a shooter, a Republican, a Marine hero. Quinn was a hero of the state, a successful rancher and state senator and a die-hard Coloradan.

For years the O’Connell office in Denver had been a place of civility, debate, and compromise. The Republicans relaxed, as long as Quinn didn’t push a liberal agenda too hard.

The mansion on 8th and Logan was too stilted for
the O’Connells. They used it for state functions, Girl Scout troops, parties, and photo ops, but home was their Chessman Park condo a few blocks away.

During the first months Quinn traveled in the state’s King Air to get a pulse of the people and to prioritize his legislative program and win new constituents as a hands-on leader.

His first goal was to balance the state’s resources for the coming century. Land and water laws were needed to protect the ranches and farms, for mining, housing developments, and the enormous tourist industry.

Quinn’s blue-ribbon panel contained a cross section of ideology, but at his personal behest they worked in a professional and intelligent manner. Quinn had imposed on them the canon that if one segment of the Colorado economy defaulted, the nature of the state could be lost.

He took on commencement speeches, town hall meetings, a semimonthly TV show, business lunches, union picnics, ribbon-cutting ceremonies and, mercifully, he was a judge in the Miss Colorado beauty pageant.

Quinn ended his day’s work in the evening, phoning all over the state to congratulate the day’s winners or to express sorrow over deaths.

Denver was a legitimate small-time big city with generations of character and livability while retaining its cowboy gait.

He and Mayor Cholate formed a Coming to Denver committee. Gateway to the Rockies! Most sports-loving city in America!

The state supported the city in hiring a top museum curator to scout the world and put together exhibitions from Mongolia to Brazil to France and have their grand openings in Denver. Likewise, he won support, with powerful persuasion,
for the funds to upgrade the Denver Symphony Orchestra.

The Coming to Denver committee purchased a small hotel, large enough for the cast and crew of a Broadway musical. Quinn and the mayor hounded New York producers to stage their big shows.

Playing on Aspen’s glitz, a series of events were telecast from skiing to the Aspen Music Festival in the summer. In a smaller way, Telluride’s film and country-western festivals reached millions.

Some of the ski areas had gone “soft” as the number of skiers dwindled. Quinn convinced the newly rich entrepreneurs of China and Russia to build vacation towns for their countrymen. Little Moscow and Little Shanghai came into being and resulted in an open door for the state’s export products.

Quinn Patrick O’Connell created a feel-good atmosphere.

But always hovering over him was the coming AMERIGUN convention. AMERIGUN sent shock waves through the state capital with their announcement that a regional AMERIGUN office was being established in Denver.

AMERIGUN was picking a fight, making a power play. It was a defeat that Governor O’Connell could not abide without throwing his delicately balanced program into a heap.

As the year of 2003 rolled on, endgame was near.

THE ALAMO—MARYLAND 2003

In the Alamo, King Porter seethed and wheezed the hours until the convention.

Deep down and not revealing it to a soul, King had prayed that Quinn would win the governorship. AMERIGUN and himself could prove their mettle by “victory at Denver.”

*  *  *

In the meantime, Quinn burned the midnight oil to try to craft some way to blunt the AMERIGUN assault.

Mayor Cholate simply did not want a rumble involving his police. Peace at any price. He conveniently booked a seminar in Tokyo during the gun group’s stay in Denver.

With limited knowledge, limited forces at his disposal, and limited legal options, Quinn was simply outgunned. The helplessness of his situation crashed down on him when AMERIGUN mailed flyers announcing the exhibition of a new weapon,
The Colorado Blizzard,
at the convention.

An Australian invention, the Blizzard, touted as the first great weapon of the new century, was a souped-up double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun that was fed cartridges through a machine-gun belt. Fifty times faster than the semi-automatic “street sweeper,” it could fire thousands of pellets a minute.

And,
no law was broken to put it on exhibition!

Duncan unsnapped a Coors and flung himself onto the big couch.

A dying sun in the foothills and a rising night rubbed past each other, and one could nearly hear the cracking baseball bats from Coors Field.

“Dad, I was hoping,” Duncan said, “we’d take in a ball game.”

“Sorry. I gave our box away tonight. How about tomorrow?”

“Sure. Mom and Rae coming?”

“If we hold a gun to their heads. Speaking of guns, I hear you’re starting a terrorist cell at school.”

“Oh, shit,” Duncan moaned, “who ratted?”

“God save the whistle-blowers,” Quinn said, “ski
masks, lead pipes, a regular commando unit. You may be the answer to AMERIGUN’s prayers.”

Duncan was out of his seat. “Dad, haven’t we taken enough shit?”

“It comes with the territory. No one forced me to run for governor.”

“I’m glad this is on the table,” Duncan said. “I’m pissed at hearing how you fornicate with animals, and I’m pissed at hearing that Rae is a junkie and my mother is a lesbian prostitute.”

Bang,
the fridge door slammed.
Pfizz
went another Coors top.

“Before you drown in your righteous indignation, Duncan, let me present you with a little scene. Opening shot, all newscasts: tear gas flying over the capitol lawn as Colorado state National Guard troops fire rubber bullets into an innocent crowd protesting the governor’s son Duncan’s hooded mob. Close-up, the governor’s son. Wreckage and fire around him considerable. Pan to shot of a bleeding King Porter. We cut away to Washington, where enraged senators are screaming for O’Connell’s ass. Denver loses a hundred million dollars in convention bookings, and the state has the mark of Cain on it for a generation. Thanks a lot, Duncan, nifty.”

“You knew who these people were! Why the hell did you have to run for governor?”

“At this moment I’d be hard pressed to give you an answer.”

Mal had been roused from his room by their yelling. He entered and snatched up the flyer on the Blizzard. “Because he wants to do something about their efforts to legalize this weapon. Maybe he did it because somebody has to stand up against evil.”

“Pardon me all to hell,” Duncan said sarcastically.

“All of us wonder,” Mal went on, “what are we doing here? This is your father, your family, and
your state, Duncan. We don’t need your pouting. Either stand with us or go back to Fort Collins and play with your Rocky Mountain oysters. Your daddy is the poster boy for AMERIGUN, only he is outlined like a target. Ten points if you hit him between the eyes.”

“It’s like judging the beauty contests, Duncan. Somebody has to do the dirty work,” Quinn said.

Duncan laughed and cried at the same time, his cheeks reddening with shame. “I’m pretty naïve, aren’t I?”

“Yep,” his grandfather agreed.

“Anything I can do, Dad?”

“Yep. I need help. I need it badly.”

“Governor’s office,” Marsha sang.

“Hello, Marsha, this is Dawn Mock. Is the governor in for me?”

“I’ll put you right through, Dr. Mock. Governor, it’s Dr. Mock.”

“Quinn,” Quinn said.

“I must talk to you right away,” she said.

“Jesus, I’ve got a parole board meeting in ten minutes, and after that I’m loaded.”

“It’s urgent, and it won’t take long. I’m on my way.” The line went dead.

“Marsha.”

“Yes, Governor.”

“Push the parole board meeting back a half hour. Cancel dinner with Assemblyman Bonnar at the Ship’s Tavern. Send Dr. Mock right in and hold all calls.”

Quinn wondered what the hell could be so urgent. In her ten months in office, it was the first time she had done this.

He smiled. Dr. Dawn Mock had been his first appointment and had bucked a nasty confirmation hearing. She had performed brilliantly.

The position of Colorado Bureau of Investigation was open. The glass ceiling was lowered for an African-American woman.

Dawn Mock, a mother of three and grandmother
of six, was married to a retired detective who now ran a regional claims office of insurance adjusters.

Dawn’s reputation on the Chicago police force had been gained as a forensics wizard. Dr. Mock’s books, speeches, seminars, and appearances as a trial witness outshone the people above her. The powers to be took Dr. Mock for granted, even though she spent a fair part of every year on loan to other police forces.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation was a compact unit of about fifty persons, mainly a support system for investigations in those towns that could not afford forensics labs or a staff of detectives.

State bureaus are rarely noted. Dawn Mock changed that. Quinn gave her a free hand and infused the bureau with new funds. Dr. Mock did the rest.

“Hi, Dawn,” he greeted her.

“Governor.”

Dawn rated a big smile. At fifty-something she had remained extremely attractive, belying her years of police work. She gestured to Quinn that she wanted secrecy. To one side of his office was a private room with a couch, a kitchenette, and small conference table. He closed the door behind her.

“You know Arne Skye?” she asked.

“I’ve met him a few times. Roving special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.”

“He’s been working out of the Chicago office,” she continued. “Arne flew in to see me today. He wants to talk to you in total one-on-one secret.”

Quinn mulled this over. “What’s your experience with him, Dawn?”

“I’ve had a lot of contact with him through the years. He’s a legend in the bureau, good people. Arne’s always been up-front with me.”

“You know I don’t like this back-alley crap,”
Quinn said, annoyed. “What do you think is on his mind?”

“Well, it’s either alcohol, tobacco, or firearms.”

“Maybe the AMERIGUN convention?” Quinn murmured hopefully.

“I don’t want to speculate, Governor. I’ve been with you a year, and I’ve never seen you draw a card from the bottom of the deck. Sorry about putting you on the midnight rendezvous circuit, but—”

“Breeds mistrust,” Quinn interrupted.

“But,” she interrupted right back, “no public office in America can exist without its dirty little secrets.”

“Thanks for sharing that with me, Dawn.”

“Quinn, Arne Skye is one of the big hitters in police world. You’d have to be crazy not to meet with him.”

“God forgive me, where and when?”

“Have you got an unmarked car?”

“No problem.”

Dawn took a room key from her purse.
STARLITE MOTEL
, the tag read, 11965
SANTA FE DRIVE
,
ROOM
106, and she slid it over the table.

“Santa Fe Drive. I haven’t cruised that street since I was a freshman at Boulder. This Arne Skye got a sense of humor or what? When?”

“Tonight, ten o’clock. He’ll be in the room waiting.”

“No tricks, no bugging, no video,” Quinn said firmly.

“You boys better start trusting each other.”

At nine-fifteen Quinn left the condo garage in Maldonado’s Cherokee.

Was this the break he had to have? It smelled of promise. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was a small
agency, some fifteen hundred agents, but they could be potent.

One of the nation’s oldest bureaus, it had been formed after the American Revolution. In those days of yore, there had been no such thing as personal income tax. The new nation had to finance itself largely on taxes from alcohol and tobacco collected by the bureau. Later, firearms and arson were added to the bureau’s mandate.

Like the Marine Corps, the ATF managed to fight off attempts to dissolve it. The bureau proved time and again they were uniquely empowered. They returned to the government in collected revenues twenty to thirty times their operating budget.

Quinn turned onto Santa Fe Drive, a diagonal truck route from the interstate to downtown Denver. He passed the train yards. The street had been once filled with truck stop cafés and hot-sheet motels. Swingers tacked their assets onto motel bulletin boards before partaking of the waterbeds and porno flicks.

The street now had a “safe” area with a strip of cantinas, musty bars, and restaurants where undocumented wetbacks gathered. Immigration raids were rare because too much of the agricultural economy and tourist industry depended on stoop labor and busboys.

As governor, Quinn could do poor little about it. It was a federal problem. Quinn felt that corruption in Mexico and bleeding the underclass were beyond his powers to dent, much less change.

The Starlite Motel had seen better days and better days before that. Quinn wiggled the Cherokee into the lot and waited. The Starlite was a one-story affair about a hundred feet removed from a corner cantina. There was an intermittent but steady line of men going to one of the rooms in the motel and returning to the cantina.

Ten o’clock.

Quinn’s shoes crunched over broken glass. His key fudged on him. He shoved the door and it broke open. The room was totally dark.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Quinn sang.

After a beat a dim lamp clicked on. Quinn could not be certain who was behind the lamp. “Hello, Governor. Is anyone listening?”

“Not unless he’s one of yours,” Quinn said.

“Dr. Mock called me and vouched for your veracity. Nice to meet someone in office with veracity.” The voice came from behind his cover. Everything about Arne Skye was medium-sized, except for his face. It was a road map of past raids, of one who had spent a life in purgatory. He studied Quinn, trying to search for clues beyond the governor’s unrevealing expression.

Arne Skye produced a bottle of vodka and smallsized Dixie cups from the bathroom.

“You going to do anything about AMERIGUN?” he said abruptly in a high voice of Norwegian influence.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Quinn replied.

“Dr. Dawn says the state has hit a brick wall.”

“These gun folks are artful dodgers,” Quinn said.

“You’ve hit a brick wall because it’s not your business. It’s mine. What have you learned, Governor?”

“That you’re a crusty character.”

Skye’s road map changed as he broke into a smile. “Where are you with this?”

“Well, let’s see. There are up to five thousand, give or take, gun and knife shows held countrywide each year, almost anonymously. The exhibition tables are leased so AMERIGUN is clear of any illegal sales by the exhibitors,” Quinn recited. “AMERIGUN is renting out fifteen hundred exhibition tables
in the convention center. Largest number ever.”

A loud customer next door announced himself. The dying dove song cooed over to them.

“What else?”

“Many exhibitions carry illegal weapons. Contact is made at the show by a buyer, and the transaction is usually carried out at a trailer court. There other categories of dirty weapons exhibited hilariously as ‘antiques.’ And to avoid dealer licenses, they can sell weapons for cash under the guise of selling from a ‘personal collection’! No record of sale required and no registration.

“Twenty to thirty percent of guns in the hands of criminals and street gangs were purchased at these gun shows. If the state canvasses the exhibition floor, we might catch a few dozen street-level dealers. If they’re caught, it’s no skin off AMERIGUN’s ass,” Quinn recited.

The customer next door was vocally aroused.

“Shit,” Arne opined, “we can’t go on meeting like this, Governor. Now, who have you spoken to confidentially about AMERIGUN?”

“Dr. Mock and my attorney general, Doc Blanchard.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, my wife and father-in-law.”

“If there is any course of action, and I’m not saying there is, any operation has to be a dead-bolted secret,” Arne said.

“What about your bureau, Skye?”

Arne shook his head. “It must be a Colorado operation. Even the ATF can be penetrated. It’s like this, safety locks on guns have just been voted down by the Congress for the fifth time. Any leaks to the gun people would be a disaster in this kind of hit. Now, let me ask you, Governor, what kind of people you have leading the Guard and state troopers?”

“Reb Butterworth is adjutant general of the
Guard. Colonel Yancey Hawke is chief of the troopers. I’d split a secret with them. In fact, both are seething to make a raid.”

“I like your chances with those three people,” Skye appraised. He inched closer to Quinn.

“Could you order a special two-week training course for seventy guardsmen and thirty troopers?”

“Training courses and seminars are ongoing. We’re always plucking some stupid climber off the top of a mountain, tracking forest fires, drug busts at the state lines, dusting for insects.”

“Crowd control?” Arne asked.

“We practice that drill regularly. Will the people in these courses have any idea of what we’re after?”

“No,” Arne said. “Anything you don’t understand about it?”

“No,” Quinn said.

“If you want to bust AMERIGUN’s ass—” Arne began.

“I want to bust AMERIGUN’s ass,” Quinn replied.

“We are bypassing the FBI, the United States government, and the Denver police. As far as the ATF is concerned, we don’t know nothing.
Capische
?”

“
Capische
,” Quinn repeated.

“We may have the stars in perfect alignment,” Arne said. “Number one, it has to be a big haul, hundreds, maybe thousands of weapons. Second, it has to show up in Denver during the convention. Third, someone of rank in AMERIGUN has to be connected to the weapons. Finally, the action must be swift and bloodless.”

A ruckus broke out in one of the nearby pleasure rooms. A half dozen men stormed out of the cantina and hauled off one of their buddies lest the police arrive and detain them all.

Arne Skye got up. The low ceiling made him look
taller than he was. “If you’ll have Butterworth and Colonel Hawke form up a hundred men for special training, I’ll contact you, through Dawn Mock.”

“We’ve got no deal, Arne.”

“You do need help, right?”

“You’re hedging your bets. I want you to show me that card you’re hiding up your sleeve.”

The governor had it figured out correctly. Arne would stay in as long as he wasn’t exposed. He would give the signal for a bust, maybe not. If the bust worked, there would probably be no investigation, for it would shut the mouths of Congress. If it went sour and was traced to him, so long career, and the governor might as well go back to Troublesome Mesa and stay.

Thirty years at the bureau, Skye thought, coming down to a single moment, possibility of gunfire, maintaining secrecy, and going over the head of his director. Shit!

Arne Skye had spent his life on the edge, sometimes completely ignoring his superiors, their mandate, and sometimes bypassing the odds, but a miss here would mean the guillotine.

“You look like you’re in need of religious help,” Quinn said.

“I know why I came to Denver,” he shot back defensively. “If I knew what I know and failed to try to prevent it, it would end up as my legacy. I’m an honest cop, Governor, but I don’t mind cutting a few corners.”

“When I took office,” Quinn replied, “I thought I was going to come out Maytag sparkling. It doesn’t work like that, does it?”

“It’s hard for guys like you and me,” Arne said. “This is the most important potential bust of three decades in the bureau. What do you know about the VEC–44?”

“It’s some kind of machine pistol,” Quinn answered.

“You betcha,” Skye said. He took an arms case from his suitcase, unzipped it, and laid the weapon on the table. It was tiny and lightweight, had a three and a half-inch barrel, and weighed under three pounds. Modified to become fully automatic, it used powerful 9mm hollow-center ammunition, and had oversized clips holding a thirty-five-round capacity.

The weapon had been developed by Belgium as a NATO policing gun. Several thousand had been produced. NATO ultimately rejected the VEC–44 as inaccurate over forty yards and extremely dangerous when troops were dealing with civilians.

“It is worthless for target shooting or as a hunting weapon. The barrel gets so hot it becomes squirrely fast, and so the military rejected it. VEC–44 converted into fully automatic operates as an in-close kill machine designed for mean streets.”

The vodka bottle lowered by two cups.

“When NATO dropped the weapon, Belgium sold the licenses and patents in Panama in the forbidden city of Colon. Colon is impossible to penetrate and is a world hub for drugs and arms smuggling.

“The package was finally taken over by Roy Sedgewick’s Ark Royal Arms Ltd., a Canadian manufacturer, always slightly ahead of the government. VEC–44’s were converted into a cash crop. Small case lots drifted into the gun shows and under the counters of gun stores.

“Sedgewick siphoned off three thousand VEC–44’s and spirited them to his farm near Toronto. They were encased and hidden in a huge barn under bales of hay.

“When the Canadian government caught up with Sedgewick and Ark Royal, he had made preparation for his old age.

“In the paradoxical world of arms smuggling, Sedgewick hooked up with Hoop Hooper, the ‘commander’ of a two-hundred-man militia, the Grand Army of Wisconsin.