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

“I’ll bet you are,” growled Colls.

“There are things here you won’t learn about, and won’t see,” Gustafson said, “until you have earned our trust, Mr. Bellator. Would you object to my calling you Vincent?”

“No objection. How big is the barracks?”

“We have two of them, Vincent. Each one with sixty bunks. Only a fraction of them are currently taken up, but we have enough people in various places around the state and the nation to fill them all… and then some.”

Gustafson led them through the door on the left, where Vince got a glimpse of a concrete-walled room arrayed in bunks and lockers. Two men in paramilitary uniforms sat at a green metal table with disassembled guns in front of them. They were cleaning the weapons and practicing assembly. Both snapped to their feet, saluting when Gustafson came through the door.

“General!” they both said at once.

“As you were,” Gustafson said.

As a former professional American soldier, Vincent found this pseudo-military fakery both laughable and annoying. But he kept himself carefully stone-faced.

Gustafson led Vince and the bodyguards back to the metal stairs. Vince noticed another stairway, probably to the basement, farther down the hall.

They climbed the main stairs up to the second floor. “Lecture hall and video center on the left,” Gustafson said, pointing. “Library and study to the right, conference room behind.”

The third floor contained another barracks, across from a cafeteria and kitchen, and one larger room divided into administrative offices and a communications center — Vince got only a glimpse of a room full of computers, monitors, and a military-style tactical radio system. A thick-bodied man wearing headphones was sitting at a radio, muttering into a microphone. Two other men were working busily at desktops. Providing propaganda to white nationalist websites?

Gustafson took him into the kitchen next. It looked like the large professional kitchen of a university cafeteria. Three women in uniform were cooking; one stirring a pot at a big stove of shiny chrome and brushed steel, the other two doing food prep at a table. The room was pungent with the smell of cooking vegetables and beef.

“These ladies are from our Shield Maiden unit,” Gustafson said proudly. “They’re trained to fight, if necessary, but their main job is to support the troops. They’re all skilled in nursing, cooking, office work.”

The tall woman at the oven turned to glance their way. Looking about thirty-five, she was blond, though maybe not originally as her eyebrows were darker. She had a slender face, high cheekbones, blue eyes, a firm chin. No makeup.

“How’s luncheon looking, Deirdre?” Gustafson asked, smiling at her.

“We’re ahead of schedule, sir,” she said, returning his smile.

She looked at Vince — and he saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes. Almost shock. But it was immediately suppressed. She nodded calmly to him.

He nodded back, and there was a curious sense of connection. Vincent sensed a razor-sharp intelligence behind those crystal-blue eyes. And he felt a kind of recognition for her, though he was sure they hadn’t met before.

Vincent instinctively turned away, obscurely feeling he might be endangering her. He waved a hand in a way that took in the whole facility.

“Cruciform design, each level, General,” Vincent said. “The floors laid out in a cross-shape. Coincidence?”

“Coincidence?” Colls frowned. “What’s he mean?”

“I mean, with the Iron Cross flying out front…”

“Not a coincidence,” Gustafson said, nodding approvingly. “The Iron Cross symbolizes the traditional German ideals of strength, faith, courage, and purity — all in a unity!”

“It’s an amazing place,” Vincent said, doing his best to sound admiring. “Is your thinking, here, survivalist?”

“If it comes to that,” Gustafson said. “But in truth, it’s a headquarters for the next stage of the United States of America. A stage of purification and greatness!” His eyes flashed with inner excitement. “A new world, Vincent! But it will come at a cost.”

“This place had to have come at a financial cost,” Vince observed dryly, looking around. “I’m guessing you paid for most of it. Your beliefs must be ironclad.”

“They are,” said Gustafson complacently.

“You said there’s a brig. Anyone in it?” Vince tried to make the question sound as casual as he could. But he was thinking that if Bobby Destry were alive, that might be where he’d be.

“That is not a matter for you to concern yourself with,” said Gustafson coldly. “Now — let us go to the lecture room. You shall see some… home movies.”

*

“General, I don’t think we should be allowing this Bellator in here,” said Mac Colls as he stood tensely in front of the desk in Gustafson’s office. “Not even for a look around. I don’t think we can trust him.”

“That’s what you thought about Gunny Hanson,” said Gustafson as he stood behind the desk, pouring himself a coffee from a steel urn. “He turned out to be one of our best men. I wanted him for the same reason I wanted you and Bellator — military experience.”

“We don’t know what this Bellator believes in!” Colls protested.

“We’ll find out. Trust me on that. I know how to put pressure on a man — till I can see him for who he is.” Gustafson tapped a little Sweet and Low into the coffee. “Your real problem with him is simply, Sergeant, that he made a fool out of you. He out-thought you and dismissed you on that trail as if you were nothing! I understand how that would be upsetting, Mac. But that’s why I want him — because he’s a cut above most men! Because he’s fast and smart and careful. If Vincent Bellator is one of us, at heart, he can be the man to take the most critical job in Operation Firepower. We’ll need a professional.”

“I could have handled that job,” Colls grumbled.

Gustafson cleared his throat. “Maybe, maybe not. But