Kathleen Creighton - The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

Not, he thought, that it mattered much how many they were. Look at Oklahoma City. How many had it taken to destroy more than two hundred lives? How many would it take to kill one small person? Just one. Lolly, his precious little girl.

Pat Graham looked at him. The burnt-umber eyes that were a legacy of her African-American heritage lit with compassion. A veteran of the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s, she knew all about pain and fear and loss. Rhett couldn’t imagine anyone he’d rather have succeed him as attorney general, or anyone he’d rather have beside him now. How many years had they worked together on the weapons-control project? She’d begged to be put on it in the beginning, he remembered, when he’d considered it too inflammatory a position for a woman. With her courage and passion she’d made him ashamed of that view. Illegal-weapons trafficking wasn’t just a political hot-button issue to Pat Graham. She’d grown up in a south-central L.A. neighborhood where the slaughter of children with assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns had become so common that it seldom even made the evening news anymore. To her, keeping guns off the nation’s streets and out of the hands of its children was a true crusade of the heart.

She swiveled back to the table and nodded at the FBI director. “Vern, you want to do the honors?”

Vernon Lee cleared his throat and shuffled through papers already in rumpled disarray. “Okay. We know they call themselves SOL.” He pronounced it “soul” and went on to explain, “That’s Spanish for sun. That’s their signature, their logo-the rising sun. The good news is-” he leaned back in the upholstered chair, leaving one hand palm down on the papers in front of him “-we know quite a bit about them. The leader of the group is a man named Gilbert McCullough-ex-marine, war hero, spent five years as a POW in Vietnam. Supposedly he’s a legitimate rancher out in Arizona now-owns several thousand acres of land, most of it pretty rugged. Raises cattle and horses. And runs a fair-size militia on the side. Actually,” he added almost as an afterthought, “SOL is one of the better run of these kinds of groups. Well organized, well trained, well disciplined.”

Vernon leaned forward again, forearms on the tabletop, hands clasped. “And that’s the bad news, I’m afraid. They’re careful. They don’t make mistakes. They cover their tracks. We believe McCullough’s goal is to eventually arm and unite all the various militia groups in that part of the country under one supreme commander-himself. That’s an ambitious undertaking for a man who never achieved a military rank above sergeant. Also expensive. We believe the group is directly responsible for a large number of bank robberies and truck hijackings in the Southwest and upper Midwest, but so far we can’t prove it. They’ve learned from others’ mistakes, it seems. They pay their taxes, for example, stay on the good side of local authorities. Up until now they’ve been real careful not to give us any excuse to go after ’em.”

Rhett rubbed at his burning eye sockets. Well, he thought, we sure as hell have an excuse to go after them now. And if we do, and if we make one mistake in the process, I’ll bury my only daughter.

He drew a steadying breath. “Okay. Give me an idea what the situation is out there. Local law enforcement-” He stopped as the head of ATF made a soft inarticulate sound. “Sorry, Henry, what was that? This is your bailiwick, after all.”

Up till now Henry Vallejo had been sitting with his chin tucked against his barrel chest, watching his fingers turn a pencil end over end. He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “We don’t believe local law can be trusted. It’s highly likely some are members of SOL themselves. We know for sure some are sympathetic to the cause. The code of the Old West, you know. Those people out there do love their guns.”

Rhett frowned. “You suspect, or you know that for a fact?”

“Fact.” Henry squirmed uneasily and glanced at Vernon Lee. “Uh…our intelligence sources have confirmed it.”

“Intelligence sources?” Rhett felt his chest quiver with a new excitement as he moved in beside Henry and leaned down close to him, gripping the table with his hands. “Are you telling me you’ve infiltrated this group? You have a man on the inside?” He looked across the table at Pat, who raised her eyebrows. He transferred the look to Vernon Lee. Vernon shrugged. Henry cleared his throat. No one appeared to be breathing. “Henry,” said Rhett, his voice turning soft and dangerous as he came back to the ATF Director, “are you telling me you knew about this? Before last night? You knew they planned to kidnap my daughter? ”

At the look on Rhett’s face, Henry reared back in alarm and held up a hand. Pat Graham pushed back her chair. “Rhett-”

“You knew? And you let it happen? You stood by and let these people kidnap my daughter? ”

“Look, I’d only gotten the word from my guy the night before. There wasn’t anything he could do, not without jeopardizing his own position-”

“Jeopardizing his position? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

The ATF man was on his feet and facing him. So was Pat Graham, who had taken Rhett’s arm in a calming grip. Which, since she was five-two and 110 pounds on a good day, was a little like a Jack Russell terrier trying to corral a Great Dane.

Vallejo’s face was flushed. “Look, Rhett. I know how you must be feeling. But think about it. You know how long it takes to get a man in position with one of these groups-they’re paranoid as hell. This man is one of the best agents we’ve got. I couldn’t risk him. For what? We keep your daughter from being taken- this time. What then? These people are hell-bent on keeping you out of the White House. As far as they’re concerned, you are the great Satan. They’ll stop at nothing-and I mean, nothing -to keep you from accepting that nomination. How many people do you figure would die if they pull off an Oklahoma City at the Dallas Convention Center? Are you prepared to pay that price for your daughter’s safety?”

As if suddenly realizing what he was asking, Vallejo halted and put a sympathetic hand on Rhett’s arm. “This way we have a shot at getting the whole organization, Rhett, don’t you see? We can bring them down. Put the whole operation out of business. It’s the chance we’ve been waiting for.”

“And my daughter?” Rhett asked in a dead-soft voice.

“My man will do everything he can to keep her safe. I promise you that.”

Rhett’s eyes burned into Vallejo’s. His fingers closed around the other man’s forearm in a grip of iron. “You promise. He’ll keep her safe. You trust him to be able to do that, this man of yours?”

“I’d trust him with my own life. More importantly, with my daughter’s life,” Vallejo said softly. “He’s the best there is.”

After a long tense moment, Rhett let out the breath he’d been holding. Around him, three others did likewise. “Okay.” His mouth was dry as ashes, his voice a croak. “So, when do we move on them?”

Vallejo looked at his watch. “We’re getting our people in position now. As soon as my man lets me know she’s safely away, we’re good to go.”

God help you, Rhett thought, his mind holding fast to the knowledge that somewhere out in the Arizona wilderness, an unknown man held his daughter’s life in his hands. God go with you-whoever you are.

Bronco heaved a silent sigh of relief as the last of the McCullough ranch’s horse barns and outbuildings sank from sight behind the crest of a juniper-studded hill. He wouldn’t feel safely away until they’d reached timber, but there was at least a measure of comfort in knowing that they were beyond visual range of the ranch and the road leading to it.