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Chaya stared at the picture clipped to the corner of the file. Hollister Mcgrew’s pitted face, framed by limp brown hair and sporting a bullish look, stared back at her. He and Johnny had been reported to have been friends in high school, and later had run and drunk together in many of the local bars before Hollister signed up for the Army.
He wasn’t gay, actually considered himself quite the ladies’ man, despite his rotting front teeth and sour breath. His honorable discharge from the Army had been medical. Hollister hadn’t handled the Army well.
“George Mack. ” Rowdy tossed out another file.
Pole skinny with straight, thinning brown hair and dirt brown eyes. For a few years, he and Johnny had been best friends, until George had joined the Navy. As with Hollister, George lasted only the first tour before receiving discharge, though his had been less than honorable. He’d nearly ended up in Leavenworth.
There were others. Many of them were rumored to be involved in drugs, grand theft, or burglary. The few who weren’t ex-military, such as Rogue Walker, a former friend of Johnny’s, were persons of interest who may or may not have had information tying Johnny to other persons of interest.
“Johnny was the one who admitted to masterminding the whole deal,” she pointed out, playing devil’s advocate.
“None of them had the brains or connections to have helped Johnny put everything together, nor could they have kept their dirty little paws off a million in cash,” Alex stated. “They are the pawns. Who’s the king?”
That was a good question. Chaya pushed her fingers through her hair in frustration. That one she hadn’t figured out yet.
“They have ties to others as well,” she stated. “The mayor and chief of police. George Mack is Mayor Sunders’s second cousin. Hollister worked for Sunders as a handyman for several weeks. The same pattern follows for everyone I’ve questioned. I received three to five names each day as well as their most likely locations or residences. And the questions. ”
“The questions aren’t that hard,” Dawg snorted. “And it’s damned easy to lie. ”
“And sometimes, it’s damned easy to see that lie. ” She shrugged. “I’ve been trained to see the lies. I’m an interrogation specialist, Dawg. This is what I do well. ”
She had been lied to quite a bit during the questioning, and the knowledge of that had gone into the notes she sent to Cranston each evening. The same notes everyone here now held.
“There’s no one here Johnny would have trusted,” Ray told them all as he looked through the files. “He was a strange boy, but trust wasn’t something he gave easily. ”
“Trust was something he traded with,” Natches said, his voice curiously bland. “Johnny only trusted his mother and Dayle. And we know Nadine would lie out of her ass if it got her something she wanted. Dayle’s no better. ”
That was his father, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of emotion in his voice.
“Cranston’s arriving here in the morning,” she told them. “I received his message before we returned to the boat. I’m hoping he’ll have more answers. ”
“I’d suggest he come bearing answers. ” Natches’s mo
re dangerous drawl was back now. If Timothy didn’t have answers, then he was going to have to deal with more than one pissed-off Mackay.
“Several of these boys were military, too,” Alex noticed. “The team we captured after Johnny’s death was all ex-military. Penny-ante troublemakers, none of them did well there, but thought they were Rambo once they came home.
“The group we’re after, Freedom’s League, uses such men to help steal the weapons they’ve targeted. But the League has never attempted to sell something so powerful to terrorists before.
“The few times they managed to steal weapons of any strength, DHS was there to stop the sales. Smaller caches the agents allowed to slip by as they worked to identify and capture those heading the militia group.
“If the League was involved, then it would have been a hit. They would have taken out the Swede and his group, and they would have used men better able to pull the operation off,” Alex stated.
And Crista agreed with that—to a point.
“Except the Swedish broker has, according to evidence he turned over, worked with the contact in this area before. The missiles went cheap. Two million?” She scoffed. “Give me a break, they could have gotten twenty million for them. And that was the intention. The broker was only buying the rights to transport and arrange auction on the missiles. And that was what Johnny didn’t know. He thought the missile sale was a done deal. ”
“Which means someone was pulling the strings somewhere else,” Natches mused, sitting back in his chair and staring at the papers on the table before lifting his eyes to Chaya.
She saw the bitterness now, the anger.
“Each step we take points in that direction,” she agreed.
“Fucking Somerset, Kentucky, a hotbed of illegal militia sales and homegrown terrorism. ” A cynical laugh passed his lips. “Son of a bitch, boys. ” He looked to his cousins. “Have we been sleeping or what?”
Chaya shook her head, aching for him. This was his home, and she knew his love for the mountains, the lake, and even in some part, the people.
“Somerset is only one of many small towns,” she told him. “The guerilla militias can grow and thrive in such areas, because of their family and community ties. They know who to target, who they can trust and who they can blackmail. Most of them are harmless. Good ole boys plotting to defend God and country against aggressors. They have ties to military personnel, gain a few weapons here and there, and it makes them feel safer. Doesn’t make it legal, but they feel safer. Then, every now and then, you get something like FL. And they twist it, pull in those once harmless groups, and suddenly they have an army with ties all across America. If we could capture the person or persons pulling the strings here in Somerset, then there’s a chance we could take the entire network down. ”
