Chapter Fifteen
Thayne didn’t even realize they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms until he was startled awake by the ringing of his phone lying on the table beside what had become their bed.
He lifted his head from Jarrett’s chest where he’d drifted off the night before, and blindly reached for the phone, swiping the screen without looking at it.
“Wolfe,”
he answered with a graveled voice.
“It’s Lincoln Snow.
We think we’ve located Mary Mason, Anthony Revilla, and Beth Quinn.
At least we know where they might be.
Can you and Evans come down to the Federal Building and meet with us this morning? I want to show you what we’ve found and we could sure use the ATF to help do some planning.”
Thayne grunted and reached for the digital clock on the bed table, turning it around so that he could read the time.
The clock read 6:30 a.m.
“Yeah, of course, Snow.
I’ll get a hold of Evans and we’ll be there.
Would nine be okay? There’s gonna be traffic.”
“Make it eight thirty.”
“Okay.”
Thayne swiped his phone closed and set it on the table.
He immediately felt Jarrett’s arm as it came around his waist.
He looked back over his shoulder and smiled.
Jarrett’s white hair was sticking up all over his head and even fresh from sleep, he looked like a damn fashion model.
He kinda hated anyone who could wake up and look that gorgeous at six thirty in the morning.
“I think I heard you say something about getting a hold of me,”
Jarrett said.
His voice was pitched low as he tugged Thayne back into his arms and buried his face in Thayne’s neck, kissing him there with soft, full lips.
Thayne wrapped his arms around Jarrett’s neck, preferring that over his rib cage in deference to his cracked ribs.
He was hurting and stiff so he knew Jarrett had to be feeling much worse.
“Yes.
Snow wants to meet us downtown at eight thirty.
Until then, you’re mine.”
Jarrett smiled and then looked over Thayne’s shoulder at the clock.
“Allowing for traffic, that gives me less than an hour to touch you.”
Thayne grinned, leaning forward and pecking Jarrett on the lips as his lover’s arms held their bodies against each other.
“Touch me, huh? I seem to remember quite a bit of touching last night and we really need to work breakfast and a shower in there somewhere.”
“Hmm,”
Jarrett hummed against his lips.
“Haven’t you ever heard of dry toast and a glass of orange juice?”
He kissed him again.
Thayne was going out of his mind but he smiled against Jarrett’s mouth.
The man was irresistible when he was warm and cuddly from sleep.
“I’ve heard of them.
Doesn’t mean I intend on eating them.
Besides don’t you need coffee in the morning?”
“Darlin’, I was a sniper, trained to stay awake and focused for seventy-two hours at a time.
The only thing I need to wake up is up here.”
He reached up and tapped his temple.
“Mind exercises.”
Thayne watched him, fascinated by how his mind worked.
Jarrett never ceased to fascinate Thayne and there was so much he still didn’t know about him.
He pulled back and stared at his face propping up on one elbow to admire his lover.
“That’s how snipers stay awake?”
“Yeah.
Most of the time we work without spotters, though if we have the luxury of company, it’s nice to have a guy to talk to.
It can be a lonely business but if we are alone, we do mental exercises to stay awake.”
“Like what?”
Thayne asked, seriously interested.
Jarrett sighed.
“Sometimes we create fantasies in our heads.
That was a favorite of mine.
Depending on the target, I might put them in the fantasy, but usually not.”
“So, like you fantasized how you were going to… what? Kill them or something?”
Jarrett thinned his lips.
“No.
I fantasized how I was going to rescue all them people the bad guy was responsible for killin’ or hurtin’ or blowin’ up or whatever bad thing the bastard had planned.
It sometimes made it easier to… you know…”
“Kill them,”
Thayne added.
Jarrett sighed and lay back, staring up at the ceiling.
“Yeah.
I guess.
It made it easier to take a life knowing that the guy I was hunting blew up a café filled with kids and babies in strollers and old ladies who stopped off with friends to have a cup of coffee before going home.”
Thayne watched Jarrett’s jaw as it ticked.
He’d upset Jarrett and that was the last thing he’d meant to do when he’d woken up that morning but Jarrett rarely talked about his life so when he got the chance to ask him something, all his questions came out at once.
He was going to stop that.
He reached for Jarrett’s chin and turned his head to face his own.
His ice-blue eyes were stunning and at the moment they were clouded with bad memories.
“I think you are a hero, Jarrett.
I don’t know if I ever told you how much of a hero you are.
What you did to serve this country was what was needed of you.
You’re the tip of a spear, Jarrett, a warrior, and you’re my hero.”
Jarrett’s eyes softened as he stared at him.
Thayne reached up and dragged his fingertips down Jarrett’s cheek.
“You’re my hero.”
Jarrett didn’t say anything for a long time and then he finally reached out and wrapped Thayne in his arms again, pulling them so close, their foreheads touched.
“I guess we’re pretty well matched then, Wolfe, cause you’re my hero.”
“You know, the first time a superior tried to give me a medal, I told him I didn’t deserve it,”
Jarrett said.
“You wanna know what he told me?”
Thayne nodded. “Yeah.”
“He told me the medal wasn’t for what I’d done.
It was for having to live with what I’d done.”
Thayne’s stomach did a little flip-flop as he felt tears prick the back of his eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Jarrett.”
Jarrett kissed Thayne then and Thayne’s body reacted the way it always did when his larger stronger lover did this.
He tried to lose himself in his lover, kissing away the painful memories he’d brought to the surface.
Jarrett kissed him back.
His kisses were sexy and sweet and filled with an emotion he rarely shared with Thayne.
He felt the deeply emotional connection with Jarrett more than usual.
Someday he was going to just lie in bed and kiss Jarrett—no sex—just kissing for kissing’s sake because he was so good at it.
He’d grown tired of fighting the way he felt about Jarrett.
He’d only resisted it because he was afraid he was the only one feeling it but he knew now that, at least some of the time, Jarrett felt it too.
He was crazy about him and wanted nothing more than to wake up this way for the rest of his life.
After a few minutes, Jarrett broke the kiss and reached up, cupping Thayne’s cheek as he gazed into his eyes.
“If we don’t stop, we’re gonna be late because if we don’t stop, I’m gonna pin you to this bed and fuck ya silly, Thayne.”
Thayne grinned, unable to stop the giddiness that had flooded through him as Jarrett kissed him.
“Shower with me?”
“What if ya drop the soap?”
Thayne snorted.
“I’ll take my chances.”
He began to roll away but Jarrett stopped him and Thayne turned back, looking over his shoulder.
“When it comes to you Wolfe, I’m a safer bet than I used to be.”
Thayne smiled and kissed him again.
“Yeah you are.”
****
They arrived at the Federal Building on Temple Street on time, and took the elevator up to the FBI offices.
They were only half-surprised to see Special Agent Snow waiting for them in the lobby.
He walked over and shook their hands, smiling when he saw the Starbucks cups they both carried.
“Thank you both for coming out to meet me here.
We have things set up in the conference room, this way.”
“We weren’t sure you were going to stay up here in LA, Snow,”
Thayne said.
“Matt was killed by this militia, so as far as I’m concerned, I go where the investigation goes.
I won’t sleep until we put these bastards behind bars.
My boss okayed my involvement in the case for as long as it takes to put these killers away.
Another one of our agents succumbed to injuries sustained in the raid on the barn last night, so as far as the FBI is concerned, these maggots have just rocketed to the top of our ten most wanted list.
The director has approved the use of every resource available to us and the money taps are cranked wide-open.
When you see how widespread this conspiracy goes, I think you’ll understand why.”
Jarrett and Thayne exchanged wary glances.
They both knew what that meant.
The relatively small case of an explosion down at Miramar had turned into a nationwide manhunt for terror suspects.
They were grim as they walked down the corridor of the modern offices, passing by a bullpen filled with tons of cubicles and people running around like crazy.
The atmosphere was a lot like the ATF’s offices, but things seemed to be moving at an even more frantic pace than usual today.
Jarrett wondered if a lot of it had to do with what the FBI had found on Greg and Mary Mason’s computer.
“Have you located Reverend James Elroy?”
Thayne asked as they walked toward a large glass-enclosed room.
Several people were seated around a massive conference room table typing on laptops.
Others taped photos and maps on the wall, and still others were writing on whiteboards.
“We’re not sure to be honest,”
Snow said, speaking with his hands.
They walked into the conference room.
“Come over here.
I’ll show you what I mean.”
He motioned them to a set of four folding picnic tables which had been set up along one wall of the conference room.
The tables were covered with a series of photos, some with Mary and Greg Mason and some with other men who were speaking at various podiums.
The FBI had written out note cards denoting the date and city where the rallies had taken place and taped them below the photos.
Jarrett figured they looked like rallies had been held all over the country, primarily in southern states.
“This is what cyber has been able to gather as far as the timeline for the Freedom Brigade from the first time they hit the radar until the present,”
Snow said.
Jarrett and Thayne walked down the length of the tables, following the story in pictures from the early 1960s to the present day, which happened to be pictures taken out at Miramar in San Diego.
The early days were photos of clippings from old newspapers and black and white photos from what appeared to be an ever growing group of grass roots followers who were marching and standing at rallies.
“Is that Reverend James?”
Thayne asked, pointing to a forty-something man in an early black and white photo.
“Yes, Mary Mason’s father.
That’s her and her mother standing in the wings,”
Snow said, pointing to a woman and young girl standing offstage but clearly visible in the old photo.
“As best we can tell, it’s the first photograph of him speaking at a segregation rally in 1964.
Mary would have been about four when the photo was taken in Wichita.”
“So this man was a public speaker even then?”
Jarrett asked.
“He actually had a flock of his own and was an outspoken opponent of the civil rights movement back then and even before.”
“Wow, he was a piece of work even then,”
Thayne said.
“And if this was taken in the early 60s, that would make him something like ninety years old today.”
Snow nodded.
“It seems so.
He’s been spreading hate for nearly fifty years and from what we’ve been able to piece together, he began advocating for a grass roots movement to overthrow the US government, calling for revolution, as early as 1976 when Jimmy Carter was elected.”
“And he branched off into his right-wing fantasyland politics after that?”
Jarrett asked.
“It seems so,”
Snow replied.
They walked farther down the row of photos, noting the Reverend James Elroy speaking at several different events, even a KKK rally in Detroit in the late 70s.
Jarrett watched as Thayne stepped closer to examine the dates on some of the photos.
“Where did you find all of this?” he asked.
“Believe it or not, a lot of it was stored in the Mason’s garage in boxes pushed up into the rafters but some of it we found on the Masons’ computer,”
Snow replied.
“So where’s the reverend now?”
Jarrett asked.
Snow stopped and turned to them.
“We can’t find any trace of him after 2013.
He stopped doing speeches and public appearances and he even stopped preaching to his small, but from what we can tell, loyal congregation.”
“So the voice changer we heard on the video short on their computer might not have been the Reverend James Elroy at all,”
Thayne said.
“Maybe he’s dead.
He would be quite old.”
“We are having it analyzed to try to strip away the filter it was put through but as best we can tell, it’s not a male voice at all.”
“What?”
Jarrett asked.
“Fuck.
I bet it’s Mary Mason’s voice.
You know, continuing her father’s legacy in his absence.”
“It’s possible.
Hell, anything’s possible,”
Snow said.
“What do you want to bet the old man got sick and she had him locked away someplace,”
Thayne said.
“Or better still, buried him in the vegetable garden when he died of natural causes.
Of course, she may have killed him with a hammer too,”
Jarrett said, shaking his head.
“We don’t have any evidence of that and there’s no death certificate.
We’re still searching to see if he’s in a hospital or retirement center somewhere, but so far, we’ve been unsuccessful.
And, if he’s at a facility under a different name, there’s little chance we’ll ever find him.
We’ll try but that doesn’t mean he will turn up,”
Snow added.
“So, it seems this guy isn’t who we’re looking for at the moment.
We should probably concentrate on Mary Mason, right?”
Thayne asked.
Snow nodded.
“That’s what we’ve been pursuing and that’s why this office looks like we’re mobilizing an army.
We found a list of leaders of other militias across the nation along with their members who are going to participate in the attacks.”
“You’re kidding,”
Jarrett said.
“Right? Convenient, huh? No one ever said Mason was very smart.
This just proves how arrogant and stupid these people really are.
Let me show you the calendar of events we found on Mason’s computer.”
He walked over to the wall where a map of the United States had been taped up.
Two agents were sticking pins into various cities, referring to several pages they had stapled together and were holding in their hands.
“May I see that for a second?”
he asked one of the agents.
The woman nodded and handed him the stapled papers.
Snow held it out to show Jarrett and Thayne.
“As best we can tell, the Freedom Brigade has partnered with other militias planning attacks in all these cities across the nation.”
Snow tapped the map on the wall.
“What? I thought these militia types were seriously territorial and self-contained,”
Jarrett said.
“Isn’t it unusual for these groups to join forces? I thought the whole philosophy behind the militia was to be a group of citizen soldiers out to defend against what they perceive is the federal government’s tyranny or some shit.
They’re supposed to not trust outsiders and they have a reputation for not even trusting each other.
That’s why some live in fenced-off self-contained communes like cult members, right? I would guess that includes other militias.”
Snow chuckled.
“Yeah, a lot of these groups are just that—taking up arms against what they perceive is government corruption—and somehow protecting individual freedom, thus the Freedom Brigade’s moniker.
The problem here is…”
He turned back to the board and pointed at all the pins.
“The Brigade’s website content somehow connected with kooks all over the country.
All these are planned attacks.”
“How many is that?”
Jarrett asked, counting pins.
The extent of the militia’s reach was mind-boggling.
“Twenty-one,”
Snow replied.
Most of the cities were in the South and all of them were major metropolitan areas.
Three in Texas including Dallas/Forth Worth, Austin, and Corpus Christi, three in Arizona including Phoenix, Tempe, and Flagstaff, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the rest peppered throughout Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky.
There was even one in Montana and of course Wichita, Kansas, where the militia seemed to have its roots.
“I don’t get what the goal is here,”
Thayne said, staring at the wall the same way Jarrett was.
He looked over to Jarrett and Snow.
“Is it to just maim and hurt people attending fireworks demonstrations or is it some show of strength?”
“Hell, we can’t figure it out,”
Snow said.
“We’ve got our cyber-crimes division analyzing the speeches which were posted on the Mason’s computer.
The amount of hate the speakers, primarily Greg Mason, spew in the speeches they give at the podium, is mind-boggling.
He and others pepper their speeches with bible verses and preach about the “end times”
stating that the United States is in a moral decline and that the leadership must be overthrown so that the common man can run the country.
In one of Greg Mason’s speeches he says that this nation needs to be washed in the blood of Jesus and purified by fire.”
“The same stuff as the fire and brimstone from the notes left in Chinatown and Miramar,”
Thayne said.
He frowned at Jarrett, looking as bleak as Jarrett felt.
“So basically he’s a treasonous anarchist nutjob preaching that the only way to save the country is to overthrow the government and burn the unbelievers,”
Jarrett concluded.
Snow nodded, looking grim.
“Pretty much.”
Jarrett glanced at Thayne.
“Fuck me,”
he drawled.
“You two stumbled on a major domestic terrorism plot and it’s a damn good thing you did,”
Snow said.
“We wanted the ATF in on this, which is why SAC Stanger is sending more agents from your office to come along on the raid.”
“What are we going to raid this time? I assume you know where Mary Mason is then.”
“We’ve located a very large storage unit in the Valley not far from her house.
It’s in her name.
We think that’s where the Freedom Brigade is storing their explosives and illegal fireworks,”
Snow said, leading them back to the table.
He pointed to a picture of a large cement building.
“This is the Mason’s storage space in Chatsworth.
There’s more than six hundred square feet of climate-controlled space here.
We believe she’s using the space to assemble bombs.
We think she and her husband were using the unit for this purpose.
After analyzing the evidence she left behind in her home, we believe she’ll be there to pick up supplies for the attacks the Freedom Brigade has planned.”
“So the attacks are planned for tonight,”
Thayne concluded.
“Jesus.
Happy Fourth of July, America.
We’re here to kill you.”
Snow nodded, looking grim.
“Yes, the calendar we found suggests that the attacks will be tonight.
There are massive fireworks displays planned in all the cities listed in their computer.”
“Let me guess,”
Jarrett said, “The Mason crew was going to conduct the show at the one here in LA.”
Snow nodded.
“We believe so, but we’ve yet to determine where.
We are hoping to get some clue when we go out to Chatsworth.”
“Wherever it is, you can bet there’s going to be families galore there just like Miramar,”
Thayne said grimly.
He glanced over at Jarrett.
“These people have to be stopped.”
“I agree.
They’re quite insane,”
Snow said.
“We think the reverend and Mary Mason are keeping bomb-making materials, black powder, and bootleg fireworks in there but we don’t want to go in and risk not catching them in the act.
We have to contain them and keep our agents safe.
If he or his daughter are truly crazy, they could light the place up and God knows what they’ve got in there.
They could take out a city block if there’s enough of it.”
“Crazy nuts with a plan to detonate bombs and exploding fireworks on the loose are much too dangerous to risk losing,”
Jarrett said, “He’s quite obviously a hater and she’s much more dangerous than the little grandma she appears to be.”
“I’ll say,”
Thayne said.
“There’s something that’s not working for me,”
Jarrett said.
The others turned to him to explain.
“If the Freedom Brigade was the one down at the border, how does Mary Mason fit in with all of those guys? Are they just hired muscle? I mean, let’s face it.
The guys down at the border were former military and mercenary types.
I know you found their affiliations with the US military when you ran the backgrounds of the ones killed, but Mary and Greg Mason were out of the military for years.
They’d been running their firework show business for a long time.
Captain Carrillo down at Miramar told us they’d been doing shows for them for more than ten years without a hitch.
So where’d they get the kind of guys that attacked us at the Fernandez farm? Those guys had serious training and weaponry.
I mean, we’re talking some seriously well-armed and well-financed stuff.”
“What better place for a bunch of disgruntled military types to hang out than a militia that has plans on toppling the federal government by starting mini wars against the police which might happen if enough citizens are killed in domestic terror incidents? Revolutions have been started with less,”
Thayne said.
Jarrett cocked his head and stared at his partner for a long time.
He finally nodded.
“I still don’t believe they could possibly think they’d succeed,”
Jarrett said.
“If we have enough Timothy McVeigh types blowing shit up, it’s going to cause chaos,”
Snow said.
“If that happens, riots may break out in these major cities.”
He tapped the map.
“Anarchy, death and destruction… and under the right circumstances, revolutionaries could possibly take over,”
Jarrett said.
“Now you sound like a conspiracy theorist, Jarrett.
It would never work,”
Thayne said.
“We have a population of 324 million people with one being born every eight seconds.”
Jarrett smirked at him.
“You are such a nerd.
How do you know that?”
Thayne looked offended.
“What? I read!”
“Well, they don’t have to succeed in blowing up the whole country.
All they have to do to get their message across is to cause a hell of a lot of innocent people a ton of injuries while killing a bunch of folks along the way,”
Snow said.
Jarrett nodded and slapped both Thayne and Snow on the back.
“Well, crime fighters, it’s up to us to stop them,”
he said, dropping the pitch of his ‘announcer’ voice as low as he could.
Thayne laughed and Snow grinned widely.
****
Thayne and Jarrett looked up from the table filled with pictures to see familiar faces walk into the conference room.
Sarah Connor and Tim Darcy were followed by Jose Galvez and Craig Baldwin, the fresh-faced former Marine rookie in their work group.
“Hey, guys,”
Thayne said, stepping forward to shake hands with his fellow agents.
He made the introductions to Snow and Special Agents Jennifer Long and Terry Meyers who joined them.
Once they were all gathered, Snow went through the evidence they’d gathered at Mary Mason’s house the day before, pointing out key pictures and materials they’d found as he explained what they’d been able to uncover about the plot to assassinate families using explosives and fireworks at shows across the country.
As Snow spoke, an older gray-haired woman walked into the room followed by SAC Stanger.
They stood quietly watching as Snow finished filled everyone in on the goals for the raid.
When he finished speaking, he turned to Stanger and the woman and held out his hand.
“I’d like to introduce FBI Special Agent in Charge Lydia Miller and ATF Special Agent in Charge Lloyd Stanger,”
Snow said.
The agents, both FBI and ATF, all nodded to SACs Miller and Stanger as they walked to the head of the table where Snow stood.
“As you know, it is imperative that we catch Mary Mason, Reverend James Elroy, and the rest of the Freedom Brigade here in Los Angeles,”
SAC Miller said.
“Their plans for tonight’s terror attacks must be uncovered and it must be stopped.
SAC Stanger and I will remain here in the Bureau offices to coordinate with other divisions of the FBI, ATF, and Homeland Security all across the nation.
Los Angeles is considered ground zero since Elroy and Mason are here.
The multi-agency task force considers the Freedom Brigade and its affiliated militias to be the highest priority domestic terror threat the nation currently faces.
We are working in full cooperation with other states and divisions as well as Washington to bring down these terrorists with as little fanfare as possible, and we are counting on all of you to bring these criminals to justice.
That said, the staging area for the raid on Mason’s storage facility in Chatsworth is at the Amtrak train station 1.3 miles from the unit.
You’ll be meeting Chief White from the LAPD out at the train station.
It goes without saying that a lot rests on your shoulders this afternoon.
Now, fall out and do your jobs well, agents.
Your country is counting on you.”
Thayne glanced at Jarrett as SAC Miller walked out of the room.
SAC Stanger walked up to him, Jarrett, and his other agents.
“The reputation of the ATF rests on your shoulders, agents,”
Stanger said.
He raised an eyebrow as he pinned Jarrett with a withering look before glancing at Thayne.
“You agents will coordinate with Chief White under Special Agent Snow’s authority.
For heaven’s sakes, don’t get killed and listen to Snow out there in the field.
Do not forget this is a joint task force and we are not rivals with the other agencies here.
We are working in full cooperation with the FBI, the LAPD, and Homeland, so don’t be cowboys.
You’re going to need to use every instinct you have.
I expect all of you to come back in one piece.
Make me proud of you.
Is that clear?”
They all responded with nods of the head and mumbled yesses.
“Good luck.”
He walked away and Thayne shot Jarrett a look.
“I think he was trying to tell you not to get yourself killed,”
Thayne said.
Sarah chuckled.
“Hey, since when am I the one who needs reminding?”
“Since forever,”
the rest of the group said in unison.
They all walked out of the conference room laughing.