Firepower, John Cutter [best summer reads .txt] 📗

the woods. He wants me to tell you something and ask you something.”

“What’s his name?”

“His name… Professor Gustafson. He says you didn’t need to protect me from Rendell, the Brethren would have done that.”

The Brethren. Vince had to pretend he’d never heard of them. “And who’s the Brethren?”

“Germanic Brethren. A… brotherhood. We have a special mission.”

“Okay. Rendell would have stomped you before they even heard about it.”

“I told the General that… He wanted me to tell you anyway. The other thing is — he wants to meet with you. He thinks you’d be a good candidate for the Brethren. But — no promises. He wants you to come with me to meet him out by our… our headquarters.”

“Is this how you and your friends plan to pay me back for our encounter in the forest? You setting me up, Shaun?”

“No! But it’s not safe for you in town. Rendell Saggett’s got a gang. It’s him and three other guys. They don’t fight fair.”

“Actually — they’ve left town. I had a little talk with him and he’s chosen to leave. They all did.”

There was a crackling silence as Shaun took this in. Finally he said, “Are you serious?”

“I’m serious,” Vince said.

“Um — okay. But Vince—”

“Listen, if your professor wants to meet with me, it’s going to be in public. Last night I spotted a roadhouse café — Pat’s Eats?”

“Sure, everyone knows it.”

“I’ll be there tonight for dinner. Seven o’clock. I invite you and your friends for pie and coffee at seven-thirty. I’m not going to meet your Brethren anywhere else.”

Vince hung up and went in to make his lunch. Maybe cut up some onions in the potatoes…

CHAPTER FOUR

Pat’s Eats was a one-story log-cabin-style structure, built to attract passing tourists. The rounded timbers were painted dark brown, chinked with white concrete, and the floor was polished wood. The interior was decorated with old-timey artifacts, like mule harnesses and motheaten deer heads. The booths were wooden; cracks in their leather seats repaired with duct tape. Vince liked the smell, the redolence from decades of bacon and maple syrup and burgers.

He pushed aside the plate that had contained his venison steak and small salad. The pretty young black-haired waitress cleared it away. “Anything else?”

“I’m good. I’ll just finish my Coca-Cola. Expecting some… friends.”

She smiled at him, seemed to want to say something more, then hurried away with his plate. The little bell on the door tinkled and Vince glanced over to see Shaun Adler, Mac Colls and a stocky, middle-aged, wide-faced man in a neat, tailored blue suit. He wore a white shirt and a red tie. His gray hair was flat-topped.

His face, with its wide mouth and bulging eyes, was vaguely familiar to Vince. A newspaper report? Something about a professor who’d been forced out of a university under a cloud?

Vince nodded and gestured for them to sit down.

Gustafson sat across from him, close to the wall; Shaun on Vince’s left, Mac Colls on Gustafson’s right.

Gustafson gave him a wintry smile. “I’m Professor Gustafson. I take it you’ve met the other men?”

“I have,” Vince said, nodding. “You gentleman like to order something? I had some apple pie. Not bad at all.”

Maybe to keep from seeming conspicuous, they ordered coffee and apple pie. Three slices of pie and three cups of coffee arrived. Gustafson and Colls ate a few bites of theirs, and Shaun wolfed his down. “Totally rockin’ pie,” he said.

Gustafson was looking at Vince in a way that seemed analytic. A measuring; an assessing. Colls was looking at him with a kind of sullen vigilance. Shaun was studiously putting four spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee.

“I understand there’s something you wanted to talk to me about,” said Vince. “The guns I appropriated?”

“We found the broken ones,” Gustafson said. “I assume you left them for us to find. Some kind of message?”

Vince shrugged. “If you like.”

“What’s the message, precisely?”

Vince smiled. “‘Don’t point guns at me’.”

“I see. The other AR-15 is intact?”

“Yes. If we have an understanding, I’ll give it to Shaun. He can take it back to you.”

“What kind of understanding?”

“That you don’t tell me where I can and can’t go. I stay off private property. Apart from that…”

“You didn’t have any right to be where you were,” Colls said. “You were on—"

Gustafson raised a hand and Colls instantly shut up, as if someone hit a mute button.

“We’re working at cross purposes here,” Gustafson said. “It’s a bad start. But I hope for a good outcome. You’re a valuable man. You proved that on the trail. And you’re a decorated professional soldier, Mr. Bellator. From a genuinely ancient family of soldiers, I understand. Your father. His father. And on… Martial ancestors going a long, long ways back.”

“You have been busy,” Vince said. He took a sip of his Coke. “How’d you do it? Fingerprints on the guns?”

Gustafson shook his head. He glanced around, probably confirming that the place was almost empty. No one was sitting close by. But he lowered his voice as he said, “We had a clear camera image of your face. There was that look at your ID. I ran it past an… a friend in government.”

“Who would that be?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

Vince nodded. That told him something. Someone fairly highly placed in national security.

Gustafson cleared his throat and folded his hands on the table. “You’re clearly an intelligent man, Mr. Bellator. And you’re an educated man — that’s in your files. You know history and culture. You know that Germanic and Anglo-Saxon cultures created civilization. They created its art and science, its architecture, its engineering.”

Vince wanted to find out what happened to Chris’s brother, Bobby — meaning he had to gain the trust of these militia types. Therefore, he