The crime scene is screwed, blued, and tattooed, Agent Palumbo thought, mentally assembling the first draft of his action report. Three agents dead, ten Sabots dead, four burned and in critical condition. Four agents and two firefighters treated for smoke inhalation. The human toll ate away at Joey’s core. It took twelve years and plenty of sacrifice to become an agent of the caliber lost today. All the training, all the legal casework, the dedication … snuffed out in seconds. Joey’s gut wrenched tighter as the notion of the instantly widowed wives and decimated families rushed into his thoughts. The contributions those agents had yet to make would never be.
To balance the loss, Joey reminded himself that he, the FBI, and America were at war with terror. In war, three dead against ten enemy dead was considered a good “kill ratio,” but that was a calculus made of soldiers on the battlefield. These were cops. Cops weren’t supposed to be combatants. Much had changed since America’s first wake up call on that crystal clear September morning in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Private citizens were now automatically deputized merely by being passengers on a plane, train, or bus. No American, be they policeman or grandmother, could ever assume they were a noncombatant. This way of thinking provided a little peace for Joey, as the mixture of anger, grief, and frustration he felt remained unfathomable.
He had been trained as a professional law enforcement officer. That entailed getting it right in times of pressure, keeping your head while those around you were losing theirs, rushing into places where others were running from. Above all, because we live in a democracy, the cop’s second-most-important job, after stopping bad guys from doing bad things, was ensuring the full effective prosecution of criminals. This was done by following the procedural rules designed to preserve chains of evidence and the legal rights granted by the Constitution.
Standing before the burned pile of rubble and ash that was the ill-fated barn, it was clear to Joey that little physical evidence had survived. Envelopes and pieces of paper were found, presumably with the names of future targets inside. Among the charred remains were personal papers, a few notes, and layouts of various factories, rail lines, and interstate routes scratched on yellow pads — in all, a pretty lousy haul for the price of three agents’ lives.
Twenty-four hours after the assault on Bufford’s farm, the news networks and daily papers anxiously awaited the press conference from the FBI on the details of the operation. Bernard Keyes was dead at the scene and two of the four surviving Sabot members had succumbed to their burns, leaving only Donald Mendleson (aka DuneMist) from Madison, Wisconsin, and Michael (Red Baron238) Spadafore from San Francisco alive. Both men were from notorious locations within the recent wave of bombings and terrorist actions — Wisconsin, the location of the train derailment, and San Francisco, where the plane exploded with Silicon Valley’s best and brightest onboard. FBI agents from field offices all across America were sifting through the lives and personal effects of not only these last two survivors but the twelve deceased members of the society as well. They searched for any shred of evidence or information with which they could piece together the extent and power of the now-decapitated organization.
Each special agent in charge had received an additional order from the top — find any references to Hiccock … William or Harold.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The morning mist was just burning off as Bill pulled up the gravel drive. His parents called it “the cabin,” but this was a house nestled in Roscoe, New York, the epicenter of the trout-fishing world. William Hiccock’s father discovered the joys of fishing late in life. Every day the weather allowed, however, he made up for the time lost with a vengeance.
Holding his peeled-back, plastic-lidded cardboard cup in one hand, Bill grabbed the bag from the Roscoe Diner off the front seat. It contained one black coffee, one tea with milk, and three fresh-baked muffins.
“Mom, Dad,” he called as he placed the bag on the kitchen table.
Alice Hiccock, in a robe and slippers, came down the stairs first, beaming at the sight of her one and only son. “Hello, Billy. You look thin.”
Bill laughed and hugged his mom.
Dad came down the stairs. “How are you, Billy?”
“Fine, Pop, how have you guys been?”
“Oh, can’t complain, things have been good,” his mom said as she opened the bag and poured the coffee and tea from the cardboard cups into her own mugs. “We see ya on TV every once in a while doing your job for the president. It feels real good to know my son is such an important person in the government.”
Alice got plates from the cabinet and, for reasons Bill could never fathom, sliced each muffin and placed them on the small dishes. Hiccock got his father’s attention and motioned toward the door. In response, the older Hiccock said, “Come out here, Bill. Let me show you my new rod and reel.”
Hiccock and his dad walked out to the porch.
“How’s it going, Dad?”
“Oh, you know, a little of this, that, and the other thing.”
“Fishin’ good?”
“Been pretty good.”
“Yeah, I got to get around to trying that sometime.”
The moment lingered. “You didn’t come here to fish, Bill. What’s got you up in God’s country during the middle of your big investigation?”
“Well, Dad, that’s on hold for a while.”
“Bad guys taking a vacation?”
“Pop, something’s come up. I’ve made a powerful enemy.”
“If you’re a worker, then it’s best not to rock the boat. But if you’re a leader, and you aren’t making waves, then you’re probably doing it wrong. When I was …”
Hiccock realized he had just assumed the emotional equivalent of sitting on his father’s knee as the man pontificated on life, work, union brotherhood, and good Christian values. As cherished a memory as that was, he forced himself to snap out of it. “Pop, they’re going after me through you.”
“Me?”
“They dug up some crap about the time the 42nd Street shuttle burned.”
“What? That was over forty years ago. What the hell …?”
“The Sabot Society.”
“Some Jewish group?”
“No, Dad, Sabot. As in wooden shoes, remember?”
Bill watched his father looking over the railing, imagining him traveling back four decades. “You remember that old story about the shoes? I must have told you that when you were six.”
“The current terrorist attacks are about to be blamed on the Sabot Society.”
“Who are they?”
“That’s the problem, Dad. They think it’s you.”
“What? What kind of lamebrain came up with that idea?”
“Do you remember a guy named Bernie Mercer?”
“Bernie …? Yeah, he was the kid who told me the shoe story. He was an apprentice in Signals and Switches.”
“Well, now he’s got his signals crossed. He’s the head of the group the FBI thinks is blowing up the country.” Bill detected a glimmer of recognition in the face that foreshadowed what his own would look like in thirty years.
“That idiot? He couldn’t blow up a balloon! He got canned right after the fire.”
“Did he start it?”
“Nah. He was a screw-up!”
“Dad, they think you and he did the job on the shuttle.”
“Those sons-a-bitches. It was a grease fire. The NTSB confirmed it in their report.”
“Wait a minute. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the fire?”
“It was rolling stock within the U.S. borders. That’s their turf. They found the cause to be a fire under the train on track three. Back then, grease fires from hotbox axle bearings were a pretty regular thing. This one got out of hand because a box had been leaking grease for months and it got all over the undercarriage of the train. When that happens, the least little …”