you tonight, but tomorrow we’re going to run over to Delaware. You get a Service truck?”
“We did,” Bob said. “A Tahoe, seventy-two thousand miles and it smells funny and the tranny sorta grinds, but, what the hell.”
“Why don’t we grab a bite in a half hour or so,” Rae suggested. “Talk about what we’re doing.”
Lucas nodded. “Sounds good.” As he walked away, he half turned, and said, “Good to see you guys. Glad to have you here.”
“Glad to be here,” Rae said.
CHAPTER
TEN
Lucas, Bob, and Rae got a snack in the hotel restaurant, caught up with one another. They talked for an hour; Rae wouldn’t discuss her recent heartbreak and Bob said that his relationship with a local gym teacher might be developing into something serious. “Girl is smart and nice-looking and she could throw a cow over a barbed-wire fence. I’m saying she’s in shape.”
“And cow-throwing is a much-needed skill set,” Rae said.
“You know what I’m saying,” Bob said.
“I know exactly where you’re coming from,” Rae said. To Lucas: “Andi’s got the best ass in Louisiana. That even includes my ass, which ain’t exactly chopped liver.”
* * *
—
AFTER EATING, they rendezvoused in Lucas’s room, so Lucas could lay out the problem. He told them about the initial threat and what he’d done so far, about his request that Charlie Lang and Stephen Gibson do some research for him, and how he’d gotten all beaten up that afternoon.
“That’s one lucky lady,” Rae said, when he finished. “Shootin’ at cops, and still alive. If I’d been there, I’d have killed her.”
“Yeah, I expect you would have,” Lucas said. “She might be the least of my problems here. I’m looking at six more groups. One of them is another prison-linked gang, and to tell the truth, after what Tabby Calvin said, this White Fist group might be the same deal as Controlled Burn. I mean, think about it: how many geniuses have you met in prison gangs?”
“Not many,” Bob said. “They mostly couldn’t figure out how to sign up for welfare, much less overthrow the government. That’s not exactly in their thought processes, most of them being complete dumbasses.”
“Exactly. Then, there’s this Forlorn Hope group,” Lucas said. “Whole different thing. I’m told that they like guns, they’re probably dangerous, and the scary thing is, they are definitely crazy. They’re pro-rape, for Christ’s sakes.”
“You don’t hear that every day,” Rae said.
“No, you don’t. The impression I got from the ANM guy is that they hate everybody, and they see themselves as people with nothing to lose. They’re dead-enders. Might as well die now because there’s nothing to live for. Can’t even get laid.”
“What about the other groups?” Bob asked. “Lotsa guns?”
“Some of them could be armed, not all of them. The ANM guy thought Patriotus might be the most likely to set up the 1919 website. They’re anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-whatever you got. They do work the politics, though. They leaflet, they march, they propagandize, they call their congressmen.”
Rae said, “Since we’re mostly worried about shooters, let’s go see this Forlorn group first thing.”
“One thing that bothers me,” Bob said, “is that we’re not really getting at what the 1919 site is set up for. They want somebody else to do the shooting. Even if it turns out Forlorn Hope or one of the others set up the website, that doesn’t get at the potential shooter.”
“That worries me,” Lucas agreed. “If it’s a lone wolf, somebody out there nursing his paranoia, how in the hell do we stop that? We do have some Secret Service coverage—a few people assigned to get the kids to school. They’ve scouted out places where a potential hit might start and are covering them.”
“That’s good,” Rae said.
“Gotta think about all of this,” Bob said. “They’ve taken down the website, right?”
“Yeah, but if you want to read it, I made a copy before it was taken down,” Lucas said.
“Send it to us—maybe we’ll come up with some ideas.”
“I will. And I’ll send you the files on all these groups. Read through them, see if anything strikes you. I’m not seeing much.”
* * *
—
AND THE NEXT MORNING, Rae asked Lucas, over waffles, “Did you actually read the stuff about Forlorn Hope?”
“Yeah, I think so, I sort of skimmed some of it,” Lucas said. “What about it?”
“This Mark Stapler guy, the leader. He lives in the back of a coffeehouse and the front of the place is like a clubhouse for the Forlorn. We might be walking into a whole bunch of assholes