Die Trying

swallowed the damn shotgun, if you want to know the truth.”
    “So where did Beau go?” Webster asked.
    “Montana,” the sheriff said. “That’s what I heard. He was into all those right-wing groups, you know, the militias. Built himself up to leader. Said the white man was going to have to stand and fight.”
    “And those other guys went with him?” Brogan asked.
    “The three of them for sure,” the sheriff said. “This big guy, I never saw before. But Little Stevie and Loder and Peter Bell, they were all in awe of Beau, like little robots. They all went up there together. They had a little cash, and they stripped the Borken place of anything they could carry, and they headed north. Figured to buy some cheap land up there and defend themselves, you know, although against who I can’t say, because the way I hear it there ain’t nobody up there, and if there is they’re all white people anyway.”
    “What’s in his file?” Webster asked.
    The sheriff shook his head.
    “Just about nothing,” he said. “Beau’s way too smart to get caught doing anything bad.”
    “But?” McGrath said. “He’s doing stuff without getting caught?”
    The sheriff nodded.
    “That armored car robbery?” he said. “North of the state somewhere? I heard about that. Didn’t stick to him, did it? I told you, way too smart.”
    “Anything else we should know?” Webster asked.
    The sheriff thought for a while and nodded again.
    “There was a fifth guy,” he said. “Name of Odell Fowler. He’ll turn up alongside of Beau, for sure. You can bet on that. Loder and Stevie and Bell get sent out doing mischief, you can be damn sure Borken and Fowler are sitting there in the shadows pulling their strings.”
    “Anything else?” Webster said again.
    “Originally there was a sixth guy,” the sheriff said. “Guy named Packer. Six of them, all thick as thieves. But Packer took up with a Mexican girl. Couldn’t help himself, I guess, just plain fell in love with her. Beau told him to stop seeing her. They fell out about it, a lot of tension going on. One day, Packer’s not around anymore, and Beau is all smiling and relaxed. We found Packer out in the scrub, nailed to a big wooden cross. Crucified. Dead for a couple of days.”
    “And you figure Borken did it?” Brogan asked.
    “Couldn’t prove it,” the sheriff replied. “But I’m sure of it. And I’m sure he talked the others into helping him do it. He’s a born leader. He can talk anybody into doing anything, I can promise you that.”

    KENDALL BACK TO Mojave was fifty miles by car. Mojave to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado was another eight hundred and thirty miles by Lear. Three hours of travel, door to door, which put them down at Peterson through the gorgeous mountain dawn. It was the kind of sight people pay money to see, but the four FBI men took no notice at all. Thursday July third, the fourth day of the crisis, and no proper rest and no proper nutrition had left them ragged and focused on nothing except the job in hand.
    General Johnson himself was not available to meet them. He was elsewhere on the giant base, on duty glad-handing the returning night patrols. His aide saluted Webster, shook hands with the other three, and walked them all over to a crew room reserved for their use. There was a huge photograph on the table, black-and-white, crisply focused. Some kind of a landscape. It looked like the surface of the moon.
    “That’s Anadyr, in Siberia,” the aide said. “Satellite photograph. Last week, there was a big air base there. A nuclear bomber base. The runway was aimed straight at our missile silos in Utah. Arms reduction treaty required it to be blown up. The Russians complied last week.”
    The four agents bent for another look. There was no trace of any man-made structure in the picture. Just savage craters.
    “Complied?” McGrath said. “Looks like they did an enthusiastic job of work.”
    “So?” Webster said.
    The aide pulled a map from the portfolio. Unfolded it and stepped around so that the agents could share his view. It was a slice of the world, eastern Asia and the western United States, with the mass of Alaska right in the center and the North Pole right at the top. The aide stretched his thumb and finger apart and spanned the distance from Siberia southeast down to Utah.
    “Anadyr was here,” he said. “Utah is here. Naturally we knew all about the bomber base, and we had countermeasures in place, which