“The militias started to get wise to us,” Adams said. “They were on the lookout for infiltrators and informants. Some in the movement advocated splitting into small cells to make the groups harder to crack. If you’ve got five members in your closed militia cell, and they’re all family or longtime friends, there’s no chance any of them’s a government plant.”
Cell-based structure… Exactly what a lot of Islamic terrorist groups use. “Obviously,” Uzi said, “ARM doesn’t like that model.”
“Most of them don’t,” Garza said. “With small cells you can’t have leaders. Some call it leaderless resistance. But militia leaders are like preachers. Take away their followers, you take away their pulpit. No audience, no needy masses to look to them for guidance. No stage to preach from. Fortunately for us, the typical militia leader’s ego is his own undoing.”
“They don’t suspect anything?”
Garza shook his head. “There are three things the militias are trained to look for in spotting infiltrators. Most obvious is the guy who tries to push the group into illegal activity. Infiltrators tend to volunteer for things like selling or purchasing illegal weapons, drugs, bombs, shit like that.”
“I do the opposite,” Adams said. “I try to point out the danger in getting too aggressive. That way, when I do suggest they go on the offensive, it’s got credibility. Because there may be five other times I’ve steered them away from doing something risky.”
“You’ve been there two years. Don’t you have enough on them?”
“Flint may seem like an idiot, but he’s got decent instincts. He’s very careful to insulate himself. He never directly gives the orders to do something. The weekly radio address, streamed over their website, comes from someone called “The General.” I don’t know who he is, and no one’s talking, if they even know. He’s the guy we want.”
Uzi shook his head. “If we’d moved on them sooner, the attempt on the veep never would’ve happened—”
“There are other reasons for taking it slowly,” Garza said. “If we moved against ARM based on what Adams gave us, and the prosecution failed—”
“How could it fail?”
“A sharp defense attorney convinces one juror Adams was trying to entrap them. It’s happened, more times than I wanna admit. We couldn’t take the chance.” Garza leaned back, satisfied he’d quieted Uzi. “If they got off, our internal source is gone. We’d never get another mole in. But if we move on them based on other evidence, stuff that can’t be traced back to Adams, our ears stay in their organization until we’ve got enough to take another shot at them.”
“So far it’s worked real well,” Adams said.
Uzi grunted. “Yeah, it’s worked so well that our veep and more than a dozen other people were blown out of the sky. Did you know about those plans — before it went down?”
“I don’t like what you’re implying,” Adams said.
“I’m not implying anything. I asked if you knew they were planning to assassinate the vice president.”
Garza held up a hand. “Let’s not lose our focus, gentlemen.”
Actually, losing focus would be a good thing for me at the moment. “How do you feel about gun control, Adams? Better yet, are you a member of NFA?”
“Right now,” Garza said, his eyes locked on Uzi, “we’re discussing what you were doing on that compound last night. Adams’s political views aren’t the issue here.”
“If he knew about the plot and withheld the information—”
“The question on the table right now is why you were on the compound.”
Uzi turned away, his eyes finding the carpet.
“This is the fucking FBI, Uzi. You can’t land a goddamn Black Hawk in someone’s living room just because you feel like it—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Enough of this,” Adams said. “He was there last night with some other guy. I don’t know who he was, but he definitely had Special Forces training.”
Uzi stood up. “This is a waste of time.”
“Is this the way you follow procedure?” The voice from behind him pierced the thick tension in the room. It was Osborn. He’d been so quiet Uzi forgot he was there. Uzi turned slowly, his hands curled into fists. “What was that?”
“He said, ‘Is this the way you follow procedure?’” Adams, a few feet from Uzi, tilted his head, daring Uzi to make a move.
“Two sets of rules,” Osborn said. “One set for you and one for everyone else. You’re a fucking hypocrite.”
Uzi charged forward, but Adams grabbed him around the torso. The two men struggled, but Garza was now out from behind his desk and in the mix. Uzi squirmed against their hold for another few seconds, then backed off.
“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Osborn said. “Our reports have been filed. Now you’ve gotta answer to the director. Or are you gonna try to punch his lights out, too?”
Uzi sorted himself out. He had to get Osborn and Adams out of his head. He needed to think of the here and now, of the implications of Osborn reporting his ARM visit to Knox. Would Knox then be obligated to inform Coulter, to protect his own ass? Where did that leave Uzi, Shepard, and Meadows?
“Wait a minute,” Uzi said, swinging his gaze to Garza. “Knox knew about Adams?”
“Of course.”
Uzi ran both hands through his hair. If Knox had someone on the inside, at the very least, why didn’t he tell me? Had he told DeSantos?
“You placed a very sensitive Bureau op in danger, Uzi.” Garza shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t think they did anything wrong by filing reports with the director. Like it or not, they were just following procedure.”
Uzi’s insides tensed. “Were they? Or was there more at work here — like revenge?”
“Hey,” Osborn said, “you made your own bed. Don’t blame me for having to sleep in it.”
Uzi steeled himself against the urge to pummel Osborn’s self-righteous smirk into the plasterboard wall. The man knew nothing of the pressures he faced, the tug of war he had been living through. The pawn he had become. To Garza: “He was the source you told me about at Union Station. Why didn’t you tell me you had a guy on the inside?”
“It was need-to-know. And I figured you might connect the dots anyway.”
Uzi didn’t reply. It explained why Garza didn’t tell Uzi — but why hadn’t Knox? It seemed like too important a detail to leave out. Then again, knowledge was power — and as Uzi was learning, Knox’s clout was bolstered by the inside information he was able to amass.
He needed to get out of there, to get some answers. Was Knox setting him up? Uzi never heard Knox actually say he should continue pursuing ARM; it was a message delivered to him by DeSantos.
Uzi decided he couldn’t make any admissions to Garza — certainly not in front of Adams or Osborn — until he knew more about who was involved and how it all fit together. For now, he would take his chances.
After giving Garza a parting glance, Uzi turned toward the door. He found himself nearly face-to-face with Osborn.
The two of them locked eyes for a moment. Then Uzi pushed past him and walked out.
Uzi left a couple of messages for DeSantos. While the Osborn-Adams situation burned at the lining of his stomach like bad whiskey, he realized it was something out of his control. What was going to happen would happen, and he would have to deal with it. All Uzi could do now was focus on the million other balls he had suspended in the air.
His biggest concern was that he had more questions than hours left before he had to give the president an answer. He returned to WFO and immersed himself in work. But when his PC clock showed 7:00, the realization hit that he was getting nowhere. He stopped into the Command Post and poured through the thousands of tips the agents had taken, none of which were panning out.