And that was the sentence that brought it all home. Everyone was momentarily shocked into silence. Magozzi was thinking that just a few hours ago, he'd been pelting softballs at a circular target, trying to send Gino into a dunk tank, rubbing a stomach abused by more deep-fried food than he normally ate in a year. A few hours. Apparently, that was all it took for the world to tilt on its axis and send everything that made sense sliding off.
"Well, Christ, man, then give us something we can use."
Knudsen's eyes went over his head. "Sheriff Pitala? May we use your office?"
"Why the hell not? You'd use it anyway. But gee, thanks for asking."
Sheriff Ed Pitala was in his office even when he wasn't. The place was cluttered with dozens of family photos, most of them featuring big, dead fish on stringers.
Agent Knudsen helped himself to the desk and chair while the others stood. Harley and Roadrunner hung back by the door, Hallo-ran and Bonar kept a respectful distance, but Magozzi and particularly Gino were in-your-face close to the desk.
"As of this moment, you're an official part of an FBI operation, and you will remain in Missaqua County after this wraps up for debriefing." Knudsen looked at each of them. "All of you. Understood?"
"Understood," Magozzi said, and everyone nodded.
"All right. We've had a watch on a cell up here for over two years."
Halloran, who had some familiarity with Wisconsin's penchant for creating and attracting fringe groups, frowned. "What kind of a cell? White supremacists? Militia?"
Knudsen made a face. "That's the problem. They don't fit the standard profiles. They're farmers, business owners, working-class men, some of them decorated veterans, and no history on any of the men that attaches them to groups like that. No suspicious activity of any kind, except what attracted our attention in the first place."
"You found out they were making fucking nerve gas."
Knudsen's eyes twitched at Gino's interruption and his language. He found a photo of an obscenely whiskered fish on the wall and just stared at it. "We do not have any confirmation on that, and I will not discuss the details of our investigation. All you need to know is that something they did rang a lot of bells in Washington recently, and we immediately sent in three men to try to infiltrate the group. Three days ago, those men called in their first success and gave us two things: next Friday's date and the letter E."
"What's the E mean?" Magozzi asked.
"Event." He paused a moment, let that sink in, then gave Sheriff Halloran a nod. "The next thing we knew, you had our agents on slabs down in Wausau."
Magozzi watched the man take a breath. It was the first visible break in his demeanor, and he wondered if Knudsen had known the murdered agents personally, if maybe they'd been friends.
"So," Knudsen continued, "we moved in fast, really fast. Within four hours, we had every agent we could get on the ground here. We had a few names of people our agents thought were key. We just finished executing warrants on the homes and businesses of all of them. If there was anything there in the first place, it's not there now. Neither are the men. We've got the county locked down tight, and we're watching every vehicle in and out."
"Oh, yeah?" Harley challenged him. "Well, we just drove in here in a rig big enough to carry a hundred if we packed them in, and we didn't have any trouble."
Knudsen gave him a nasty smile. "You've had two cars on you since you crossed the line."
Gino's brows went up to impressed height, a place they'd never been when the FBI was involved.
Magozzi said, "So something's going down, and you've got until Friday to stop it."
"It might be worse than that. We suspect the call from our agents was intercepted-that's what got them killed-so they could have dismantled the entire operation and moved it somewhere else .., or,worst-case scenario, maybe they moved up the schedule and we don't have until Friday anymore."
Magozzi felt his stomach drop. "You have a target?"
"No."
Gino was dumbfounded. "Jesus Christ, these people are going to hit something and you don't even know what?"
"Correct."
Magozzi felt like he was swimming through Jell-O. "We need the names of the men you identified and the sites you raided."
Knudsen shrugged. "You can get them from the man out at the front desk, but if you ask me, it's a waste of time. Agents are still crawling all over every site, and for miles in every direction, and we haven't turned up anything. Listen. We appreciate your concern over your missing people, and we're impressed with what you've put together so far. So impressed, in fact, that we're going to have a long talk with you all later about how you managed to do that. But we can't see any kind of a possible connection between your missing people and our operation. Just a freak coincidence."
"The coincidence is the connection," Magozzi said.
"Whatever. At any rate, we're willing to give you the run of the roads in the county, as long as you keep watch for a few things we're looking for and report back immediately if you see them."
"So what are we looking for?"
"Milk trucks."
Knudsen stayed in Sheriff Pitala's office to make some calls while the others went out to the lobby. Harley strutted up to the suit at the front desk to collect the names and raid sites that Knudsen had promised.
Halloran signaled Sheriff Pitala with a jerk of his head, and the rest of them went outside.
Halloran was face-to-face with Sheriff Pitala, but both men had their hands in their pockets and were looking down at the ground.
"That little twerp in there ask you to do anything for him?" Pitala asked.
"Yep."
"He told you to look for something, right?"
"Right."
Pitala nodded, looking off into the night. "Yeah, well, he told us to look for something, too. That was the only way he'd let my people out on the road to find Doug Lee. Wonder if it was the same thing."
"Milk trucks," Magozzi said, and Sheriff Pitala smiled and pulled out a Marlboro.
"Thank God. Didn't know how long I'd be able to keep that one under my hat."
Harley burst out the door and thrust a sheet of paper at Magozzi.
Magozzi glanced at the sheet, then passed the paper to Roadrunner. "Three names, three places of business, three houses. Maybe you can do some computer magic with these the Feds can't, but to tell you the truth, I think it's pretty much a dead end."
"No shit," Gino said. "The Feds are all over those sites already. No reason for us to travel down that road. So once again, we get a piece of the puzzle, and we aren't any farther ahead. We still don't have a clue where to start looking."
Magozzi turned to Sheriff Pitala. "You have your people covering the whole county, looking for Deputy Lee?"
"I've got thirty-five people out there, including a couple of secretaries." He raised his eyes to Magozzi. "It's a small department. That's damn near my whole roster. Most of them are concentrated in Doug's patrol area-that was the northern sector tonight. Five hundred square miles."
"Jesus," Gino murmured. "You could have a thousand men out there who'd still miss him if he was standing behind a tree."
"Yep."
Halloran was looking out at the cars in the lot, rubbing the underside of his lip the way he always did when he was thinking hard. "On the phone, you said you tried to radio Lee when the Feds first pulled your patrols."
Sheriff Pitala nodded. "Tried to. Couldn't reach him, but didn't worry about it. Figured he was on his way home anyhow."
"But you said you thought he was probably in a dead radio zone, that's why you couldn't reach him."
"That's right. We've got a few of those in the hollows where we don't have enough repeaters around, and some more near the high tension lines. . , oh, shit. Goddamnit.Goddammit."