Gavin Holder Series: The Trilogy Box Set

By R.M. Galloway

I checked my gun to make sure I had a full clip, chambered a round, and ran downstairs. When I put a gun in this guy's face and maybe knocked out a tooth or two, he would sure as hell tell me where Jackie was.

But he was gone when I got down there, no trace of his presence left behind. Just as if I had imagined the whole thing. I stood on the street with a gun in my hand, and looked around in all directions. She was lost, the people who took her from me were lost, and I was more lost than any of them.

Special Agent Gavin Holder is a man with secrets – among them his relationship with Jackie Cole, widow of a dead FBI informant. What the FBI doesn't know about Gavin Holder could put him in prison, but what Holder doesn't know about Jackie Cole could put him in the grave. 

As Holder desperately tries to keep his past a secret, the consequences of his involvement with Jackie become more and more deadly. Holder is slowly drawn into a vast conspiracy, directed by a sinister fanatic known only as Father - the leader of the terrorist cult Ultima Thule. 

Gavin Holder may not be a very good FBI agent – but he may also be the only man alive who can stop the cult. Sometimes the "bad guy" saves the day.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: R&C Publishing
• Release date: May 17, 2018

Book preview

One

Chapter 1

The whole thing started in an almost-empty parking lot in front of an anonymous motel in the suburbs of DC in a light snow squall. The sort of place just off the highway where you would only ever stop if you were on a road trip, had already blown your budget for the day on food and fuel, and just wanted a place to be unconscious until the morning. Doors that hung a little bit loose on their hinges, yellow walls even in the no-smoking section, neighbors you didn't want to get too close a look at.

Or maybe it all started in another parking lot a decade and a half before, with the rain pounding down on the back of my head while I lay there face-first in a puddle of muddy water mixed with blood while somebody screamed a name over and over. Not my name.

The music on both occasions was about the same. Angry young men with loud guitars, simple chords in simple patterns. The two memories bleed into each other when I think about them, I can never imagine one without the other. I wake up sometimes and realize I've been dreaming about them as if they were both the same night, the details of one incident mixed up with the other. People died both times. I could tell the story starting from the first parking lot if I wanted to. How I came to be lying there and what came after that and how it all led up to here – but we'll start with the motel parking lot, it's easier to tell it that way.

The thing that sticks out in my memory is how heavy and dirty the sky looked that Tuesday, how heavy and dirty it made everything else look. The neon letters on the vacancy sign were red and garish, the prostitutes in the truck-stop parking lot across the street looked exhausted and sick. Stray flakes of snow drifted down from the sky like they had lost the will to stay up there, floating silently past the gray branches of dead trees. I felt colder than I should have felt considering that the car had heat and I was dressed for the weather. Snow in March is enough to make anyone feel like a Tom Waits song, later Tom Waits I mean, where he always sounds like he's pounding on a bucket and shouting some incoherent nonsense.

From the motel windows, the orange light from a desk-lamp seemed to flicker in time with the chaotic rock n roll blasting out of an old boombox inside the room. I couldn't see who was moving around in there very clearly, but based on the shadows passing in front of the curtains there were three or four of them. Bank robbers and maybe worse than that, if the information we had was reliable. It made me mildly embarrassed that I was enjoying the music. Enjoying it in a nostalgic sort of way.

I sipped my coffee and puckered my mouth at the citrus-peel aftertaste, glancing at the man in the driver's seat of our stakeout car. He was also grimacing. How the hell do you get citrus aftertaste in coffee anyway? That's what I was thinking. My partner Jim Duffy was thinking about something else.

No kidding, said Duffy. Their music is terrible. It was certainly loud. None of the pigeons dared to get close enough to grab the half-eaten fish sandwich lying in a styrofoam container in the parking spot next to ours.  But some people like that sort of thing, and once upon a time I was one of them.

The music's alright, I said. The coffee's sour.

You actually like that noise?

I guess I used to. Don't really listen to it anymore. You know how it goes.

I guess I don't. I'm an old school guy. Led Zeppelin and the Eagles all the way.

Oldies radio, you mean. I laughed. The standard gag between us was that he was a square or an old fogy and I was a freak in sheep's clothing.

Classic rock. Whatever was on the radio when I was in high school, he said.

Led Zeppelin was already on the oldies station when you were in high school. Seriously, Duffy. You literally act twenty years older than you actually are. And anyone who only listens to whatever was playing when they were in high school doesn't really like music in the first place.

Oh fucking well, so I don't like music much. This is not exactly a liability for an FBI agent. Being some kind of grown-up metal kid is not exactly an asset either. One of those scrawny guys with greasy hair and a leather jacket, who somehow cleaned his act up and got his ass into Quantico.

You've got me all wrong, my friend. I was never a metal kid, even if I did have to clean my act up a bit to get into Quantico. And anyway, that isn't metal they're playing, I said. That's hardcore punk. I can't tell what kind exactly, I can't hear it that clearly.

Hardcore punk. You're serious. You do realize you're a federal law enforcement officer. Not to mention a grown man.

Well, I don't really listen to it anymore, I said. Misspent youth.

No shit. I'll bet you were even in a band. Duffy was not the kind of guy to be impressed by that sort of thing.

Guilty as charged. I raised my hands in mock apology. "Chaos Factor."

"Chaos Factor. With circles around the A's, right? Really radical. You know, there's nothing sadder than a guy who used to be bad-ass."

That's a fact, I said. But I was never bad-ass. All we did was play three chords as fast as we could.

Long as you know yourself, said Duffy solemnly. That's the important part.

Okay then, wise guy. It was a long, long time ago. We never even made an album, just played local shows. And like I said, I don't really listen to that stuff anymore. Different time of life entirely.

So what is it these days? Smooth jazz?

Laugh it up, Duffy, laugh it up. Let's get back on the job. Right now what I need to know about is Ultima Thule.

We're not gonna find out much about them here. I can't see a damn thing. The curtains on the motel room windows were still drawn and all we could see was shadows. Distorted black shapes that looked like dancing neanderthals celebrating some primal ritual of fire and darkness. The melting snowflakes smeared across our windshield didn't make it any easier to see what they were really up to.

Neither can I, I said. Let's review what Alvin gave us.

Chapter 2

Special Agent in Charge Emily Alvin was our boss, the supervisor of an FBI task force investigating anti-government subversive groups like Ultima Thule. Not a high priority task force or a high priority investigatory target. We weren't even convinced they really existed. Even their name was too strange to be real, except for the fact that the guy who told us about it was probably too stupid to have made it up himself.

They hate the government, we all want to take their guns away and make them use picture IDs when they sign checks. Or some such shit, said Duffy.

I chuckled. It was true enough, these groups all start to seem kind of the same after a little while, although there are always little differences between them. Ultima Thule had only just appeared on the FBI's radar, when a Confidential Informant told us they were responsible for a string of bank robberies and an armored car heist or two. The CI in question was in the hotel room right now, and we were supposed to sit tight unless he started screaming for help. The target of this operation was a man named Eugene Huhn, a big wheel in the UT according to what the informant told us. The CI was supposed to meet with Huhn as they had previously agreed, and talk him into meeting a supplier who could sell him a large quantity of high explosives. That supplier would actually be an FBI agent such as Duffy or myself, and then we would have Mr. Eugene Huhn and the UT with him. Assuming any of it was real in the first place.

Under normal circumstances, we wouldn't be there in the parking lot babysitting the CI. Paid snitches are usually on their own, and if their luck runs out it just runs out. But SAC Alvin thought there was something funny about the whole situation, and she didn't want us to let the informant out of our sight.

The truth is, we weren't at all sure we bought his story. We checked up on Ultima Thule but we didn't find anything about an organization with that name. Ultima Thule was just an imaginary island that was supposed to exist somewhere far in the north but was probably just a confused traveler's report about ancient Scandinavia. Then there was some sort of Proto-Nazi occult brotherhood called the Thule Society before World War II.

So if we could draw any conclusions from that it would probably be that they were some kind of Nazi outfit, except the CI just stared at us blankly when we brought that up and said we didn't understand anything at all. Maybe if we ever brought them in we would learn something about what they actually believed – not that it really mattered much. They could be militia guys or Sovereign Citizens or even communists, the real issue for our task force was that they wanted to overthrow the U.S. Government but had some ideology other than radical Islam. That's what our task force specialized in.

No, seriously, said Duffy. I'll go over what we've got.

He opened up the file and started skimming through it.

CI's name is Robert Hitchcock, street name Bobby Bullet. Pulled over by highway patrol with a shit-load of meth and some AR-15s, decided he wasn't so gangster anymore. Started claiming he had info on all these bank robberies and armored car heists, a string of jobs going back five years or so. No one ever thought they were connected before. First National in Chicago, Stirling Bank in Detroit, Hometown Credit Union in Pennsylvania – a whole bunch of others. If he's telling the truth, these guys are nomads, roaming around from one place to another so no one thinks to tie it all together. Then the armored car jobs start, most of those in the Boston area so we always assumed it was Irish Mafia remnants out of Charlestown. Then some more bank jobs in Maryland and Delaware.  Almost like they were slowly drifting this way on purpose.

Or those were actually all done by different people and he just kept a list to BS us with if he ever got picked up. They had a handful of real scores, right?

Not at first anyway, but they got better over time. Their first bank only got them a few hundred, but some of the armored car jobs were professional work. One got them about a quarter-mil. Based on what Bobby Bullet is saying, they put some of the profits into meth and some into guns. He claims they already spent it all, but Alvin doesn't believe him.

I wonder why not.

Duffy shrugged. I don't question that woman's instincts. You know her rep.

You've got a point there. But the whole thing is fairly dubious. I mean, what kind of gang moves around that much? Don't any of these people have homes to go back to? And why have some of their jobs been so much more professional than others? There's a big difference between taking a few hundred from a bank teller and a quarter-million dollars from an armored car.

He says they got some help from an outlaw biker in Boston, showed them how to do the serious stuff. I don't completely buy it either, but Alvin seems to. And like I said...

Yeah, sure. Hey, here's a question, I said, suddenly nervous. "How would we know if he needed help? I mean, that music is loud."

We were just supposed to confirm the basic facts. He said this Huhn guy and a couple of skinhead types would be waiting for him there – okay, they were. We can hear their shitty music, no offense. Confirming that he wasn't just making it all up completely was basically our entire mission here. He's supposed to sell them on the idea of buying explosives and set up a meeting so we can fuck them all over. Is this guy's well-being suddenly a priority for us?

It probably should be, if we actually want to make this case. We hadn't been working it long enough to feel like it was our case to make in the first place. Bobby Bullet was originally the property of another agent based on the bank robbery angle, but somehow SAC Alvin managed to wrestle it away from the guy and get it assigned to our minor terrorism task force instead. I had no idea why it was so important to her, but for whatever reason she fought for it and they gave her what she wanted.

That's assuming there's a case to be made, said Duffy. You want to go check on him?

We probably should.

Okay, I've got your back.

Chapter 3

I got out of the car, stepping straight into a blast of cold wind and little snowflakes that nipped at my face as they flew in at me. I looked around, didn't see anyone in the parking lot except Duffy, stepping out of our parked car with his hand on his gun and the same expression of skepticism that's been etched into the lines of his face since his face first had lines. A huge fat motorcycle was parked near the sidewalk, but otherwise our vehicle was the only one in sight. I drew my gun, and so did Duffy. I had never been in a gunfight at all before that day, but Duffy had seen his share. He was a combat veteran before he even joined the FBI, and he'd been in a few dicey situations as a special agent too. The sum total of my combat experience up until that day involved getting in a street-fights as a young punk, although those can be bad enough as I well knew.

I cross-stepped up to the wall of the motel and creeped as close to it as I could, without ever stepping directly in front of the window. The music was even louder from out here, and I could tell what it was now. I think the previous track was Minor Threat, but the one they were playing as I approached was really old Oi! punk from England, the Angelic Upstarts. Oi! music is sing-along punk, the kind of stuff skinheads and soccer hooligans would be into. In their own way, these guys were just as far behind the times as Jim Duffy himself.  The UT guys were playing Murder of Liddle Towers, a relatively reflective song by punk standards. Almost an Oi! ballad you might say. It's about a man who got killed by the cops back in 1976, but not being a cop exactly I didn't take it personally.

I hadn't spoken with an Angelic Upstarts fan in at least a decade, and I never expected to meet another one considering that I was probably the only agent in FBI history who had ever listened to them. They weren't really a big deal even back in the day, at least not compared to bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols. Pretty much restricted to the skinhead scene - but they weren't a racist band, so that didn't help me narrow down the Ultima Thule ideology much. 

The thing is, the music selection didn't tend to support the CI's story. It was the kind of thing Blank Reg from Max Headroom would have played on Big Time, that show he ran from an old van on the outskirts of the city. Nostalgia punk, not fanatic anti-government militia music. Whatever that would sound like.

But then there was the quiet bit. In the middle of the song, Mensi's voice drops down to a whisper and all you can hear is him repeating himself over and over while the drums keep up a slow backbeat and the guitar drops back to a faint, insistent melody.

I slipped back into my own memories when I heard that voice, a place in my head I rarely let myself go back to. That night when the squat got evicted at last and the scene broke up, the end of an era and the end of the punk rock chapter of my life. We had a wrecking party, trying to see who could knock the biggest hole in the plaster with whatever we had at hand – our fists, our feet. And Duffy was right. The A in the Chaos Factor graffiti was in fact in a circle, and I smashed my fist right through that circle and won the championship wall-wrecker title for life. Popov Pete, on the other hand, was not quite so lucky. When he kicked at the wall he bounced right off it, took three steps backward and then fell over, unconscious on the floor with his open bottle of Popov in his right hand and his pink liberty spikes pointing back in the opposite direction like the needle of a compass.

It happened at the exact same moment in the song, a song I had never heard once in all the years since then. The song goes quiet and Mensi whispers, and the word he whispers is murder and he just keeps repeating it:

"Murder... Murder... Murder... Murder..."

On the night of the wrecking party we all started laughing, because it was so funny to see Pete collapse and fall down right when Mensi started in like that. Maybe it wouldn't have been murder exactly, but looking back on it, it probably would have been considered manslaughter if Pete had actually died from knocking himself out and we hadn't done anything to get him help. But then he woke up and started laughing right along with us and everything was fine.

Nobody laughed this time, though. When the quiet bit in the song started, I heard our CI screaming.

Chapter 4

If you've never heard a man being tortured to death, let me tell you this – you will never have a good night's sleep again after you hear that sound. Bobby Bullet was not a good man by anyone's definition. In fact, he was basically the lowest known form of human life. But the shrieking I heard through that motel window was not the voice of Bobby Bullet the terrorist bank robber or Bobby Bullet the snitch. It was the sound of an animal in mortal terror and inconceivable pain. Some nameless thing desperate for help of any kind.

I took a glance back at Duffy and shouted I'm going in! then kicked the door below the lock, counting on the poor condition of the hinges to send it flying open if not knocking it right off the wall. Instead the damn thing broke halfway off and hung there from the frame like Christ on the cross, blocking my view and keeping me from charging through into the room.

FBI! I yelled, Get your hands up!

They opened fire before I even got all the words out, and I had to duck back out of the doorway so fast I didn't quite know why I'd done it until I was already out of the line of fire. The windshield of our parked car cracked around the three holes that suddenly sprouted in it, and my ears rang from the god awful noise of the UT gunman's huge .45.

Holy shit! said Duffy. I'll call for back-up! Keep your head out of that doorway, Holder! 

Instead of listening to my more-experienced colleague, I darted in and shot three times through the broken door, hoping to open up a clear line of fire. They answered that with their own barrage, and I caught a glimpse of the shooter before I ducked back out of the way. Age between 30 and 35, head shaved, cold gray eyes. Behind him I saw another man sliding a magazine into a submachine gun with an ominous click, but there wasn't much I could do about that at the moment.

Duffy fired three shots from beside the car, using the mass of the engine for cover. The motel window exploded, and someone yelled something from inside the room. Whatever it was, it was not an offer to surrender. The submachine gun opened up, and the fish sandwich in the parking lot splattered everywhere, little white flakes of half-rotten fried fish and soggy bread exploding in all directions. They must not have been able to see clearly from inside the room, forcing them to fire blindly out the window at everything. A line of little holes ran up the side of our car as the submachine gun rattled.

I waited a second this time before I fired again. The guy with the revolver was shooting three round bursts, but he might have had time to reload while the submachine gun was shooting up the parking lot and stitching holes in our car's frame. I wanted to give him a chance to fire another burst. He kept me waiting.

This is the FBI! I yelled again. I heard sirens in the distance, and some part of my brain was probably aware that help was coming and that it might make sense to play for time. There is always at least the possibility that the other guy will just give up, when he realizes you have the full weight and authority of the Federal government behind you.

Fuck the FBI! the gunman replied, and pulled the trigger three times. So much for that theory. Some people don’t actually care very much about the full weight and authority of the Federal government. The sound was monstrous, and Duffy swore as one of the rounds went right through the car and blew a crater in the parking lot beside him. I knew this was my moment, and I took it. I stepped into the doorway, aimed my gun directly at his center mass, and shot him dead. The irony was that he had a bullet-proof vest. I could see it lying on the motel bed, but he wasn't wearing it. It really does pay to take precautions, but this guy was never going to get the chance to learn from his mistake. That’s just how it works sometimes.

I had just enough time to see the look of surprise on his face before I ducked back out of the door and behind the wall. The guy with the submachine gun howled out loud, and held the trigger down until his clip was empty. I have to admit, it was fairly awe-inspiring. The submachine gun clattered like a hail storm. The window frame splintered and fell apart. The bullets blew dozens of holes in the pavement. Our vehicle slowly sank on a flat tire, collapsing like a wounded animal dropping down to its knees before going to sleep for the last time. But then his weapon was empty and he was out of options. 

Blue and whites were rolling into the parking lot at last, and local cops were pouring out of them with their guns drawn. I couldn't turn around and look long enough to tell how many, but it was clear that the odds had just turned in our favor in a big way.

You're shit out of luck, asshole! yelled Duffy. You'd better come out of there or you're about to die!

The guy must have agreed with Duffy's assessment of the situation, because he suddenly called Hold on! I'm throwing my weapon out! I give up!

Out came the submachine gun, clattering on the sidewalk empty and useless.

Come out with your hands over your head! I told him. Do anything else at all and I will shoot you!

He came out slowly, a short but wiry man with a little brown goatee and a tear tattooed in blue ink just below his right eye. Both hands were clasped tightly together over the back of his head, and he was very careful indeed to avoid provoking us. He didn't exactly look beaten, though. If anything the look on his face was kind of smug, like he knew something we didn't know. He pretty much always looked that way, as we soon found out.

The motel room was basically destroyed by the gunfight. The door hung on part of one hinge over the dead body of the man with the revolver. He still looked surprised. The pillows on the bed had all been shredded, and the bed itself was slumped over like it was about to melt into the floor. In a chair beside the bed there was a busted lamp, resting in two shards over the open, staring eyes of Bobby Bullet.

When I remembered those eyes later I thought of Johnny Rotten's trademark stare, but right at that moment they didn't look anything like that. They looked like the eyes of a man who had just seen the worst thing in the whole universe and was damn happy not to be alive anymore. He was wrapped up in gray duct tape to keep him from getting out of the chair, but they hadn't gagged him. His tongue stuck out of his mouth like it was trying to crawl away to a better place, and there was a thin switchblade stuck right through it and hanging there like a Christmas tree decoration.

Bobby Bullet was dead, and with him our inside source on Ultima Thule. I had killed the man who had just been torturing him, and even though that man had been trying to kill me too it was a lot to take in. I paused for a moment to take my bearings, and little details jumped out at me. There was a calendar on the wall, but nobody had changed the page since last September. It showed a big-haired blonde woman in a one-piece American flag swimsuit, with a wet splatter of fresh blood rolling slowly down her perfect teeth. There was blood all over the place, much of it pooled up in the carpet all sticky and dark.

I shook myself to clear my head, then leaned over to get a closer look at the dead man in the chair. I searched his jean jacket, found a passport with his picture and someone else's name in it. I found a burner phone in his left jeans pocket, slick with blood and filth from whatever they'd been doing to his genitals before the gunfight started. I found a ballpoint pen, a Zippo lighter, a pack of gum.

And one more thing – an antique brass pocket-watch, the kind you can open and close. I think I knew what it was as soon as my hand brushed against it, even though I know that's impossible. I remember feeling this thrill of recognition as my fingers closed around the watch, although there's really no way I could have known what it was that quickly. But I pulled it out and there it was, the scuff marks on the lower left side were exactly the same. The Victorian floral design was the same. It even smelled the same, a faint hint of jasmine.

My mother's pocket-watch. I remembered the exact moment when she first gave it to me, the way her hand felt when it brushed against mine. I'll never forget it, and I could never mistake it for anything else. It was the only thing I had from her in all those foster homes, the only thing I was able to hold on to for a while, the only thing I took with me when I ran away. But I hadn't seen it in fifteen years.

Duffy came into the room a fraction of a second after I slipped it into my suit pocket. Or was it a fraction of a second before? He had a funny look on his face when I turned around, but I wasn't sure what the look was about. It could just as easily have been the awful sight of Robert Hitchcock, staring up at heaven but looking straight into hell.

Duffy swallowed awkwardly. Well, that's, uhhh... that's pretty horrible. You and I are in deep shit, Holder. This was not supposed to end in a bloodbath. It wasn't really supposed to be anything at all.

Alvin will understand, I said. We didn't have much choice.

The CI is stone dead. He's not just dead, they damn well butchered him. You really think you can spin that somehow? We fucked this up.

We didn't have any way of knowing they'd made him. And we couldn't hear what was going on.

Tell that to Antie Em, he said, using the office nickname for our boss. And that's just to start with. This is going to be a big deal, Gavin. Do you get what I'm saying? Investigations and so on.

I started walking toward the doorway but Duffy stopped me, putting a hand on my arm to hold me back. He gave me a questioning look, like he was trying to figure something out about me. But all he said in the end was Be ready when you go out there. The media's already here.

Don't worry, I said. I won't say anything.

It doesn't matter whether you say anything or not, they're going to find out who you are. Get ready to be a local celebrity, Holder. Hope you don't have a past to come back and haunt you.

I gave him a weak little smile. But the thing is, I did.

Chapter 5

So, let's review what we have here, said Emily Alvin, also known as Antie Em, the Special Agent in Charge of our task force. Duffy and I were standing awkwardly at attention in front of her desk at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, DC. It had taken us the rest of the day to deal with the mess at the motel, including all the reporters who had slithered in after the smell of blood. Then there was getting Huhn booked and getting debriefed about the shooting, and crawling home to my apartment and falling instantly and very deeply unconscious. Back at the Bureau the next morning there had been more debriefing, conversations about my mental state after having killed a man, and so on. At long last we'd been called in to talk to our boss, the Special Agent in Charge. 

She had an open folder in front of her and was staring at the contents with some distaste. I don't know if people called her Antie Em because she looked something like the character from Wizard of Oz, or because she gave the first impression of being a respectable matron. First impressions can be dangerous.

One dead suspect, one dead informant. One destroyed motel room, although that couldn't have been worth much in the first place. More important than the simple fact that our informant is dead, there is also the fact that we can't get any more information out of him. We can't find out what he really knows. But more about that in a moment. First I'd like to hear if there is something resembling an explanation for all this.

I tried to swallow before answering, but my throat felt too dry. The fact is, you wouldn't want to be on this woman's bad side. Emily Alvin looked like a late-middle-aged housewife with a hairstyle that could not possibly have been popular within the past few decades, but there was something intimidating about her. She had a way of cocking her head when she asked a question, like she was a hungry bird and you were something little and crunchy.

I finally managed to swallow, but before I could say anything Duffy intervened.

We didn't have any other choice, ma'am. They were torturing our CI, we had to intervene.

To save the CI, she said. Who is now dead despite your efforts.

Yes, ma'am, said Duffy. We should have moved in sooner than we did, but we had no way of knowing what was going on.

So what made you decide to intervene when you did?

Holder just had a feeling, he said. And that feeling was right.

The music was too loud, I added. It just seemed to me that they might have turned it up for a reason.

Which was certainly the case. Still, the reality of the matter is that you did not intervene soon enough. If you had done so, there is a strong chance Robert Hitchcock would still be alive. And Jeffrey Schroeder as well. The man you shot. There will be an inquiry into that of course, although I expect nothing much will come of it. The death of the CI is a much graver matter. If we can't keep our informants safe, they have no reason to trust us. They have no reason to tell us anything at all. But enough of that for now.

She picked up the papers in front of her, struck them sharply against the desk as if to slap some sense into them, and dropped them back into their folder.  We now know that his story was at least partially true. Ultima Thule exists, and they are dangerous. But that doesn't mean he was telling us the whole truth.

So what did he leave out? I asked.

I can't claim to be certain. Alvin was famous for her ability to spot underlying patterns from extremely limited information. Her main claim to fame in the FBI was that she had single-handedly uncovered a Soviet mole back in the Cold War. According to the story as I heard it, she found his coffee-break account of what he did on his vacation unconvincing for some reason, so she asked him a few innocent-sounding questions. When he went home for the night she checked up on his answers, and found out that his old Navy unit had not in fact held a reunion that weekend at all. She brought the issue up with her supervisor, but the man was unconvinced. So she drove out to the bar where he claimed the reunion had happened, looked for the spots she would have used herself, and found his dead drop. The guy had been so flustered by her questions that he had actually given himself away. The rest was legend. Some years later, she had managed to make an Assistant Director very angry for reasons that were still not public knowledge although there were many rumors. That's when she got assigned to run our task force. We waited for her to continue, and she sighed a little, as if the whole thing made her sad somehow.

Hitchcock's account of the money situation doesn't seem to add up. We checked with the banks and some of their other targets, and the totals for the jobs he claims they did are consistently higher than what he told us. The agent who originally had the case thought there might have been other jobs, including a few home invasions against major Boston-area drug dealers.

What are you saying? asked Duffy.

There might be a stash somewhere. A large amount of cash and drugs, maybe some jewelry. Either the victims of their robberies were inflating their losses for insurance reasons, or he was lying to us about how much they got. If it's the latter, it could still be out there. I think the UT has been building up a huge cash reserve to finance an armed uprising against the United States government. I was hoping he could tell us where that stash might be. But now he's dead.

From the way she was looking at us, you would think we had killed Bobby Bullet ourselves just to inconvenience her. She stared at us just long enough to make us truly uncomfortable before opening her mouth again.

How do you propose we move on from here? she asked us.

At least we have Huhn. said Duffy.

So we do. She nodded. I'll need you two to question him as soon as possible. If he is willing to talk, we'll find out whether there's anything to this hypothesis or not. And if there isn't, we can at least find out what their next plans are. Or what it is they hope to accomplish.

What about the inquiry? I asked.

You'll find out more when I know more, she said. That's all I can tell you. For now, the best thing you can really do is not think about it too much. Just do your job to the best of your ability and let the chips fall wherever they fall. Now get to it.

Chapter 6

On our way to the interrogation room, Duffy suddenly swung around and grabbed me by the arm like he had done in the motel room. Hold on a second, he said. There's something I need to ask you about.

What is it? I asked him. But I already knew.

When I came into the room... I don't really know how to say this Holder, but I thought for a second that I saw you pocket something. If there's going to be an inquiry, every single little detail is going to come out by the end of it. I need to be sure that we're clear on everything. I don't want my life to get fucked up because you didn't tell me everything.

What are you suggesting? I said. That I took drugs or cash or something from a dead man's pocket? I wouldn't do anything like that. Do you even know me?

You took something, though. So cut the bullshit. He was staring right at me, and his fingers were tight on my arm. I don't know what instinct it was that wouldn't let me tell him the truth, but the words that came out of my mouth in the next moment were not the truth.

Okay, okay, I said. It was a pack of cigarettes. That's not exactly evidence, now is it?

He made a disgusted sound and dropped my arm. But he also turned and started walking again. That's a bad habit to get into, he said. A slippery slope. Okay, so it isn't drugs or cash. But it's not that different. I would like to suggest in the strongest possible terms that you not ever do that again.

No problem. I won't. Just don't go making a big deal out of nothing.

Come on, he said. We have an interrogation to do.

Chapter 7

Eugene Huhn was a short man, but he was definitely not a nervous man. And if there is anything that really ought to make you nervous, it is being interrogated on Federal charges. He was a lot like one of those yappy little dogs that doesn't understand how small it actually is. Like he could just keep yipping at us till we got out of his yard. He sat in the hard plastic chair in the interrogation room and grinned right back at us from across the table, puffing on his cigarette like there was nothing in the world he had to be scared of. His little mustache and goatee were both neatly trimmed, and his blue eyes gleamed with amusement at it all. The tear tattoo next to his eye was a bit incongruous, given how amused he seemed to be with the whole thing. Duffy spoke into the recording device as the interview began.

Interrogation of Eugene Huhn. This is Special Agent Jim Duffy speaking. Present with me is Special Agent Gavin Holder. This interview is being conducted at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. Just for the record, Mr. Huhn, we need you to understand that this interview is being recorded. Do you understand that?

Which one of you guys is the bad cop? he said. I'd just like to know ahead of time so I know whose ass to kiss.

We're not cops in the first place, I said. We're the FBI.

Oh, so you're all bad.

Mr. Huhn, would please spell your name for us? asked Duffy.

H-U-H-N, Huhn. E-U-G-E-N-E, Eugene. You want my serial number?

Are you active-duty U.S. Military, Mr. Huhn?

I'm active-duty something. Still grinning.

And your address, Mr. Huhn?

No fixed abode.

Your driver's license shows your address as 325 Broadway in Revere, Massachussetts.

Home of America's first public beach, said Eugene.

You don't live there anymore? I asked.

No fixed abode, he said again, as if he liked the sound of it.

Okay, said Duffy. Here's the situation. This is your first interview with us here right now. It doesn't matter what happened before. We're starting fresh. The page is blank, you can fill it in with whatever you want. All we want is the truth.

Eugene chuckled. I know what you want. You know what you want. But you're never gonna get it from me, so why bother? I'm not a snitch like Bobby.

You're different from Bobby in more ways than one, I said. Let's list off a few. For starters, nobody stuck a dull switchblade through your tongue. Right?

Yeah, that's one, he said. The grin got bigger.

Second, you're still alive. That's a big one, right?

Sure is, he agreed quite cheerfully. And good old Bobby is not. I wonder how that happened?

Third is that you can easily spend the rest of your life in a maximum security federal prison, considering how alive you are. Much of it probably in solitary.

Over-incarceration is a serious problem these days from what I hear. Even for nonviolent offenses such as mine.

Nonviolent offenses, said Duffy. You’ve got to be kidding. Care to clarify that?

I mean technically, yeah. Snitches and FBI agents aren't actually human beings, so... He shrugged and puffed on his cigarette. I suppose you could get me for discharging a firearm within city limits. There's that anyway.

So you admit to firing on us in the motel parking lot? I asked.

Why don't you just tell us the story from your own perspective, said Duffy.

Well, let's see, said Huhn. We were interrogating an enemy agent when we came under attack from hostile forces. Sergeant Schroeder provided covering fire while I loaded my weapon, then I engaged the enemy by laying down a pattern of suppressing fire until Schroeder was wounded. When I realized Schroeder was out of action I continued to engage hostile forces until lack of ammunition rendered me unable to continue. Then I surrendered in order to remain available for future operations.

I don't think this guy actually realizes the situation he's in, said Duffy. This is not a war game.

I agree, said Eugene. It's not a game at all.

Seriously, Huhn, I said. "The fact is, we own you. There is no conceivable way you could beat this thing. And anyway, the Federal conviction rate is something like 90%. If we charge a man, that man is done."

Oh, I know you've got me, said Huhn. You were there when I emptied my clip at you. I mean, what I can say? It just doesn't matter. I'm a prisoner of war. For now.

What do you mean when you say that you're a prisoner of war?

"The Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, Article 3: In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions..."

Let me stop you right there for a minute, said Duffy. You're a bank robber. An armored car robber. Maybe a guy who jacks up drug dealers.

I am a soldier, said Eugene Huhn, And you are my enemies. I'll be a prisoner until my brothers free me. And what happens to you after that?

I don't think we're making a lot of progress here, I said. "Let's try a different angle. If you're at war with the United States government, the United States government has the right to know it. That's in the Geneva Conventions too, you know."

He's right, said Duffy. We had to learn about all that in the service. It's been a while, but let me think. You were definitely carrying arms openly, I'll give you that. But if you wanted to have combatant privileges you should also have been wearing a uniform identifiable from a distance. So you kind of have a problem there.

Huhn shook his head as if he just couldn't believe how ridiculous we were. The United States government knew all about it. We declared war on the Feds a very long time ago, just after we started the UT. Christ on a crutch, man. Look that shit up in your files.

I looked over at Duffy, who seemed just as impressed with Huhn's inflated sense of self-importance as I was. He mouthed the word narcissist and turned back to Huhn.

According to the information we have, you grew up in Minneapolis, he said.

Yeah, that's right. What, do I have to type it all out for you? Double Bolt!

I didn't have any clue what 'double bolt' referred to, but it sounded like it could be a gang name. I made a mental note of it for later.

How exactly did you declare war on the US government? I asked. If we wanted to look up this declaration of yours, where would we find it?

It's all in your files, he said. And you know it is.

Eugene was making the same mistake a lot of conspiracy theorists do. The US government is not always as organized and on top of everything as people like to believe. In fact, it usually isn’t. It could very well be that Ultima Thule had mailed some sort of document to some office or agency at some point, formally announcing their intention to wage war. That didn't mean we actually had the document handy. It could just as easily have gone in the circular file somewhere, dismissed as the work of a crackpot.

We'll check into all that as soon as we're done here, I said. But since you're here with us as a POW, would you mind telling me exactly what it is your group is fighting for?

The grin he gave me wouldn't have looked out of place on a Khmer Rouge killing field. We're fighting for the renewal and revival of the species, he said. Renewal through purification, revival through transformation, the rebirth of a people and its place. Ultima Thule will cleanse the earth, revive the compact between the planet and her human children. None of that is classified, I'm allowed to share that information openly. Ultima Thule will empty the cities, put an end to decadence and despair. And you know what that means.

Yeah, I do know what that means, said Duffy. It means your best bet is an insanity defense.

That's only what I expected, said Huhn. The sheeple all bleat the same.

Sheeple? said Duffy. Would you mind clarifying what that means?

It's a clever combination of sheep and people, I said.

"That really is clever. But here are some facts for you, Mr. Huhn. You are not at war with the United States government, you are just a gang-member. You rob banks and jack up drug dealers, like I said. Your gang brothers are not going to get you out of here. That's not because they don't have the power to do