Stuart Woods - Heat

He found Nashua Building Supply with no difficulty, across the road from the university, as Withers had said. It did not seem that he had been followed. He parked in front and went into the huge, hangarlike building. He was shown to an office constructed in the rear of the building and was greeted by John Withers, who shook his hand and closed the office door behind him.

“This way,” Withers said, leading him to another door, which opened to the outside at the rear of the building.

A plain sedan was waiting, with only a driver inside. Jesse recognized him as the man who had followed him in San Francisco.

“We’ve only got a two-minute drive,” the man said. “Kip has arranged for a room at the university. Get your head down.”

Jesse was led into a red brick building and down a hallway to a room where another man in a suit stood guard. The man rapped on the door, and Kip Fuller stepped out into the hallway.

“Come over here a minute,” Kip said, drawing Jesse away from the other two men. “There are some things I have to say to you before we go into that room.”

“Shoot,” Jesse replied.

“First of all, the people in there are Barker; an assistant attorney general with responsibility for oversight of Justice Department law enforcement agencies, reporting directly to the AG; an army brigadier general who oversees all unconventional warfare units for the Pentagon; and a bird colonel, who is a military adviser to the National Security Council, and who has the ear of the president. Does that sound like who you wanted?”

“It certainly does.”

“Now listen; I have not reported your threat of ‘move in two weeks or exposure’ to Barker, and it’s extremely important that you make no threats while you are in that room. These people are here to listen to you make your case, and they’re your best chance of getting this done the way you want it done.”

“I understand.”

“Okay, follow me. By the way, I won’t be making any introductions; they’ll think you don’t know who they are.”

“Right.” Jesse followed Kip into the room. The seats were arranged on steeply pitched tiers, and each desk had its own lamp. The shades were drawn and the room was lit by those lamps and by floodlights that illuminated the blackboard area, where satellite photographs of St. Clair and the surrounding area were mounted. The photographs that Jesse had himself taken were there, too, and he guessed that they had been computer enhanced. He followed Kip to the lectern.

“Gentlemen,” Kip said, halting their conversation, “I’d like to introduce Jesse Warden. Jesse, why don’t you begin at the beginning; explain who you are and how you came to be in St. Clair.”

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Jesse said, taking a deep breath and trying to calm a sudden attack of stage fright. “My name, as Mr. Fuller has said, is Jesse Warden. I was formerly an agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency, attached to the South Florida Task Force and specializing in undercover work. My commander at that time was Mr. Barker, and Mr. Fuller was my colleague in the office.

“Just over two years ago, I was arrested and charged with the theft of half a million dollars from the office evidence locker and the murder of my partner, whose body was found in the trunk of my car, along with the money.”

There was the slightest stirring among his audience.

“I was innocent of both charges, but I was convicted of the murder of a federal official and theft of government property; I was given a life sentence and incarcerated in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. After serving fourteen months there I was released in the custody of Mr. Barker and Mr. Fuller and offered a presidential pardon, if I would assist in the conviction of the head of a religious cult and his two chief aides, who were rumored to be amassing large numbers of weapons and other materiel in a small town in the Idaho panhandle.”

Barker was glowering at him; apparently, he had not expected any mention of the pardon.

Jesse took the group step by step through his infiltration of the First Church of the Aryan Universe, and finally, through a complete description-of what he had seen in Coldwater’s underground fortifications. His audience maintained a dead silence until he had finished, and the silence continued for another half a minute thereafter.

Finally, the man who Jesse assumed to be the assistant AG spoke. “Mr. Warden, have you determined what Coldwater’s intentions are?”

“No, sir, I haven’t, and I have the feeling that I won’t know until it’s too late to do anything about it. All I can tell you is that he’s planning something that might make things so hot for him and his followers that he would have to retreat underground.”

“Do you think Coldwater is insane?”

“I have no qualifications in that sphere; I can only give you my personal impression of the man. There are times when I think he’s nutty as a fruitcake, but he is always very self-possessed and seems to always know exactly what he is doing. I think he certainly has very pronounced megalomaniacal tendencies, but I’m not sure whether that qualifies as insanity.”

“Do you think he is fully capable of using this... facility he has built?”

“I have the very strong impression that he is determined to do so. Whether it will be in a day or a year, I cannot tell you.”

The man who Jesse thought was the brigadier general spoke up. “For a start, why can’t a detachment of federal officers in plain clothes simply drive up to Coldwater’s house and arrest him?”

Jesse suppressed a wild laugh. “Sir, that would be about as easy as driving through the White House gates and arresting the president of the United States. The very first thing that must be done is to take the mountaintop and the reinforced facilities there, so that Coldwater cannot bring his people inside and button it down tight.”

“I’d be interested in hearing how you think that could be done,” the general said. “I mean, after seeing these satshots of the place, I’d really like your suggestions.”

“I’m not a military man, sir, but if it were up to me I’d go at it in three ways: first, I’d infiltrate a large armed contingent at night three or four miles north of the mountain and have them approach it on foot and scale the sides; second, I’d send a large truck or two, filled with troops and disguised in some way, right up the road to the top and try ramming the gates; third, I’d send helicopters, armed with armor-penetrating weapons to attack the smaller structures on top, and follow immediately with many troop-carrying choppers. There are, of course, drawbacks to each of these methods.”

“And what are the drawbacks?” the general asked.

“First, it would not surprise me to learn that Coldwater has placed some sort of sensors in the woods to the north to pick up anyone on foot, and I know that there are machine-gun emplacements on all sides for the purposes of repelling infantry; second, I think the chances of trucks getting up the road undetected and breaking open the gates are no better than fifty-fifty; and third, I had a look at the top of the mountain in a light airplane last Sunday, and I was told that there were stinger missiles in place that would take out any approaching aircraft. You’re likely to lose some choppers.”

Jesse turned back to the satellite photographs. “I think, also, that in any first strike, you should take the police station, here, which is the security center; the telephone company, here; and I think you should cut the high voltage power line that brings in the town’s electricity from the north, or get the power company to. That would do a lot to cut or, at least, confuse their communications with Coldwater and his with his people.”