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

Should he let it bother him? Killing three men and burying them in the woods...

Did it bother him, deep down?

He had to say — nope, it didn’t bother him. Maybe it was all the extra-judicial killing he’d done for Delta Force. And in the Yucatan. You kind of lost your ability to let it worry you…

He had no trouble getting to sleep.

The next morning he went jogging, did a full regime of Ranger calisthenics, and went fishing again. Later, he forced himself to read more of Gustafson’s book. When he couldn’t stand that any more, he rode the Harley into town.

Drinking a beer at Pat’s Eats after dinner, Vince opened his laptop and looked up the Southern Poverty Law Center article about the Germanic Brethren. The article assessed content from the Brethren’s propaganda arm and concluded: It would be easy to dismiss these NeoNazis as merely dilettantes, German-mythology fetishists, but their leader, Raoul Gustafson, styles himself as the commanding officer, the ‘General’ of a large group of armed men who wear quasi-military uniforms. He claims his Wolf Base is only a recreational center for gun and military enthusiasts. But the rhetoric speaks again and again of “revolutionary action” to restore pre-Civil War America. The Germanic Brethren are Neo-Confederates, anti-Semites, Klan-affiliated neo-Nazis — and armed with semi-automatic weapons, at least. They may well be a domestic terrorist bomb waiting to explode… They often use the white supremacist codename for “coming race war”, which is “the Big Boogaloo” or just “the boogaloo”…

Vince laughed softly to himself at that. “The ‘boogaloo’.”

I could walk away from this, Vince told himself. Best to just get Bobby out, if he can, and walk the hell away from these brainwashed idiots.

He said it to himself to hear what his conscience would say in reply. He sighed when it responded.

You know what you have to do, it told him. You have the skills.

Someone has to do it…

He got out his phone and called the special number that Gustafson had given him. A man answered, and Vince said, “This is Vince Bellator. Tell the General that I’m ready to boogaloo.”

Then he hung up, and began waiting.

CHAPTER SIX

Midmorning, late October, and Vince was standing in a light rain encircled by fifteen men as he picked up a three hundred-pound oak log in a deadlift. He finished the lift, then squatted, and did it again.

“He’s got good form,” said Marco approvingly. “Not that easy to have with those logs.”

It was part of Wolf Base’s “Centurion Method” fitness training, something Vince had been taking part in for two weeks.

They passed small boulders bucket brigade-style to one another; they ran with backpacks full of rocks; they lifted logs and tried to run upstream in shoulder-deep water. The whole thing was a fad amongst white-power militia groups. Because it had the Old Europe feel to it, Gustafson had taken to it wholeheartedly.

Two more lifts and Marco said, “That’s enough, Vince. Who’s next?”

“I got this,” said the big blond with the carefully cropped beard. He’d been one of Vince’s original escorts, that first day. He was pale as you can be without albinism; his eyebrows were blond and his eyes were gray-blue. He was wearing a paramilitary uniform, just as Vince and the other men were. Bjorn, his name was. He had a slight Norwegian accent.

Vince dropped the log, wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and got into the circle with the others. He watched Bjorn make a point of doing two more deadlifts than he’d done.

He noted the three Shield Maidens coming through the meadow between the creek and the access road, bringing baskets of juice and protein bars down to the trainees. They wore their uniforms with short military jackets against the increasing chill.

Marco called a break. Eating a protein bar and drinking cranberry juice, Vince sidled up to Wynn Foster, who was sitting on the log Vince had dropped. Wynn wasn’t a log lifter, Vince reflected; he was a log sitter. “Hey, Wynn. How’s the training going?”

Vince hadn’t left the base for two weeks. He’d been quietly asking around, trying to find out what the militia’s big plan was — but he did it slowly, carefully, to evade suspicion. He’d made no headway. And Gustafson had told him nothing more.

“I’m keeping up,” Wynn said through mouthfuls of protein bar. “Not my forte. I work in the comm center, usually.”

“You’re probably part of the coordination of all those guys out there in the country?”

“I guess. Yeah. I keep charge. Count heads. I do a lot of IT security too. Fucking deep-state hackers keep trying to break in…”

“All those Brethren across the country — must be hard to keep a lid on security. Some people are careless. When you’ve got, what, a thousand guys talking…”

“It’s not a thousand. Two hundred and change. I mean — the fully committed ones. They know better than to talk.”

“About the boogaloo? There’s lots of talk about it.”

“Not many know… the how and where.”

So it’s gone that far, Vince thought. There’s a how and a where.

“The boogaloo is coming,” Vince said, nodding, just as if he knew. “They have to know.”

Wynn frowned. “The General told you?”

“He told me some things. It’s still quite a ways off. I’m antsy. I want to get out there and kick some ass.”

“It’s not that long off.” He stood up, kind of abruptly. “I’d better get back up there and check my… project.”

Wondering if he’d pushed too hard, Vince watched him walking off.

“We’re going on a trail run next,” Marco announced. “Pile up your trash over here and line up. You know the drill…”

Two of the women were heading back up to the house, Vince noticed, but Deirdre was walking off into the woods, carrying a basket.

He