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.”
Gideon's War and Hard Target
Tillman closed his eyes and pulled up the rough woolen army...
“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!”