"They would go with you, if that is what you want. Some of the entrants into the program are not particularly attached to their families, and prefer to start fresh." Let him think about that for a while Henry thought.

"You must realize," Bowman went on, "that I have less than glowing admiration for the Witness Protection Program. It is run by sloppy amateurs who understandably don't care much about the future of Mob accountants and other typical...participants. They shoot their mouths off with alarming regularity, which is one of the reasons why the program's record of protecting people from truly motivated enemies approaches a 100% failure rate.

"In your case, however, the only person who would want to find you and kill you is me, and I will already have your new name, Social Security number, address, and other particulars. That is why I suggest you not do anything now that might piss me off later. Like giving me wrong info," Henry added pointedly. "As to why I interrupted your little raid-in-progress, I suspect you know the answer to that question also, but I'll spell it out for you.

"For many years now, you fools have been using blank search warrants, planting evidence, and perjuring yourselves in court. You've reinterpreted your own rulings and used entrapment to put people in prison over paperwork disputes. You've killed citizens over suspected non-payment of $200 taxes, and burned their children alive. You've tried to frame a man and threatened him with prison because a piece of wood was a half-inch too short, and when he wouldn't roll over for you, your buddies at the FBI shot his son in the back and blew his wife's head off while she was nursing their ten-month old daughter. You illegally invaded the house of a man who pays more taxes in a year than the President and his wife have in their whole lives. Then you jacked that man's pregnant wife up against her living room wall and made her miscarry, and you did it because your own people fucked up the Washington records of his machine gun collection." Henry took a breath and squatted a foot or so behind where Wilson Blair sat with his arms taped around the tree.

"It has finally dawned on certain people inside the Beltway that your band of inept storm troopers are responsible for the ultimate atrocity: You have been costing them votes. The President wants this problem solved in a way that won't embarrass him, so he had a little chat with my supervisor. That's why I'm here."

"You're alone?" Blair demanded in astonishment. Henry Bowman smiled as he remembered the old story about the Texas Ranger. There's only one riot, ain't there?

"Have to be, for a job like this," Henry answered aloud. "Bunch of others around, word would eventually get out as to what really happened, and that would embarrass the President. And, there'd be no way to let you live. Too many who'd know about you and what you did." He stood up.

"Time for me to go get Miss Jackson. Got some things I need to say to both of you." Wilson Blair had many things he wanted answered as he listened to his captor's receding footsteps, but he held his tongue. ***

"He didn't kill you, neither," G.G. Jackson said flatly. She was duct-taped to a platform truck which Henry had wheeled to a spot a few feet to the side of the ATF supervisor. Wilson Blair did not reply.

"Okay, folks, here's the deal," Henry Bowman said briskly after he had checked to see that both his captives were securely bound. "Both of you have been a great help to me. Miss Jackson, you knew much more about this operation than I had been told you would. I had thought that only your supervisor knew about the materials that he planned to plant in the house. And volunteering the info about the other agents in the system, and where Blair left his computer-that was good, too, although I had already found the laptop and copied all the files." Blair jerked at the words he was hearing.

"You told-" he started to say, then stopped when he felt the muzzle of the Hi-Standard .22 behind his right ear.

"And Agent Blair," Henry went on, acting as if nothing had happened. "You spelled out exactly what you intended to do, and what the other raid teams' instructions were." He paced back and forth behind his two captives, letting the tension increase.

"Point is," Henry said reasonably, "I can only take one of you in the Witness protection program. Those are my orders. So the question is, which one of you is it going to be? Hmn? Which one of you is going to be willing to help me out the most? Which one of you really wants to stay alive?"

"You the big man, struttin' 'round with the gun," G.G. Jackson said.

Obviously a short memory Henry Bowman said to himself, but remained silent and let the woman continue. "You makin' all the rules. You decide. Ain't gon' be makin' me start cryin' 'bout how much I want to live."

"Sir," Wilson Blair said suddenly. "I can and will tell you much more than she did, or ever could. There are all sorts of things that aren't in my computer, that I can tell you about. You didn't ask me about my computer," he said desperately. "I forgot. I would have told you-and there's probably nothing on it that you don't already have anyway. Roster of the other agents, other raids that are scheduled, you already have that, I know, but I can tell you much more-anything! Anything you want to know about any agent, any mission, I know or I can find out. She doesn't know anything-for God's sake, take me!" "I guess that settles it, then," Henry said softly. It's obvious who here has the spine. He grabbed the grip of the Hi-Standard, released the safety as the barrel cleared the top of his jeans pocket, and pulled the trigger twice. The double-tap put both 29-grain slugs within a half-inch of each other, just behind and below the left ear.

Gonorrhea Gaily Jackson, originally from Chicago's south side, was dead.

"Okay, Blair," Henry Bowman said from behind the floodlight. "I got lots of videotape, and I got lots of time. We're going to do this until you get it right. I know you're a good bullshitter, so if at any time this starts sounding like you don't mean it, I'm going to stop, rewind, and we'll start all over from the beginning. When you see the red light above the lens, that means I'm recording. Get ready."

Wilson Blair sat in a folding metal chair in Allen Kane's living room. In front of him was a 3' by 6' table with folding legs. It had come from Kane's basement, next to the dryer, and was covered with a white sheet. On it sat Blair's briefcase, and a glass of ice water. The wood-paneled wall behind Blair was also covered with a white bedsheet that Henry Bowman had nailed to the paneling near the ceiling.

The image through the viewfinder of the tripod-mounted video camera showed Blair sitting behind one side of the covered tabletop, with a white background behind. The camera's position cropped off the left half of the table and all of the wall that was more than a foot above Blair's head. There would be no way that someone viewing the tape would be able to tell anything about the room, how long the table was, what kind of legs it had, or if indeed it was a table at all, or just a packing crate turned on its side.

"Three seconds, then go," Henry Bowman instructed. Blair saw the red light appear, and licked his lips.

"My name is Wilson Blair," he said in a clear tenor. "I am a regional director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The government of this country, through the efforts of my agency, has been engaged in a systematic program of lies, coercion, and evidence planting, with the ultimate goal of disarming the citizenry. Our actions have chilled the freedoms of this country's strongest defenders of individual rights." He paused to take a sip of water, then went on.

"In April of this year," Blair said, "I initiated what was to be a three-part raid on the homes of three U.S. citizens who had never in their lives committed any crime more serious than traffic violations. In order to plan this raid, I employed a number of illegal wiretaps, and I was prepared to use three blank search warrants which had been signed in advance by a federal judge who has signed many blank warrants for us in the past."

Wilson Blair laid the briefcase flat on the table and opened it. He withdrew three pieces of paper, held them up, then put them away.

"I scheduled the three raids so that they would take place when the...subjects of these raids were thousands of miles away. I wanted to see that these three people would be jailed without bond. To make sure that would happen, I obtained several things that I planned to plant in the three houses at the time of the raids, which would then be found by other agents during the ensuing searches." Blair scowled, remembering that his captor had spelled out exactly how he had to explain this section clearly, and took a deep breath.

"I have planted evidence after the fact on many prior occasions," he said quickly, "but these were always firearms-related objects: an auto-sear, a barrel we had cut off to a length below the legal minimum, a bunch of muffler tubing and fender washers that we could say were illegal silencer parts, dummy grenades that a paid informant could testify were being illegally reactivated, or metal dies and stamps that we could claim a citizen had been using to re-number firearms.

"These tactics always resulted in indictments, but in each case the accused was free to hire lawyers and gather evidence of our wrongdoing. Almost invariably the citizen would eventually plead to a charge of conspiracy after having spent a few hundred thousand dollars in court costs and legal fees, and be sentenced to a few years in prison.

"This, however, was expensive for the government, and in the raids I was planning, I wanted all three of the suspects to be jailed without bond. That was going to require much more serious charges, and therefore much more serious evidence." Blair saw his captor's arm come up from behind the floodlight with the muzzle of the Smith & Wesson pointed at Blair's face. He quickly amended his last sentence. "Much more serious planted evidence," the ATF man said meaningfully as he reached once more into the briefcase. "The first item," he explained, "was not gun-related at all. Instead..."

Henry Bowman watched from behind the spotlight as Blair proceeded with his presentation. His delivery is smoother than I expected Henry thought with a small smile. Although Blair was hardly in a position where he could launch an effective attack, Bowman held the 5" N-frame at waist level, trained in the general direction of the ATF man's nose.

"I have quit my position at the BATF, I no longer work for the Federal Government, and I cannot be contacted," Blair said as he concluded his presentation. "I may, however, transmit additional messages. They will not include my image, for my appearance will change drastically immediately after this recording is made." He swallowed. "Future communications will, however, contain information that only I and a few other people could know." Blair sat motionless in the chair, and Henry Bowman switched off the video camera. Wilson Blair breathed with relief when the red light blinked out.

"Don't move, Mister Blair," Henry instructed as he tossed a dishtowel to the man. "Mop off your face, then throw the towel on the floor. We're going to do it again, this time with a few changes." Bowman popped the tape out of the camera and inserted a new one.

"We'll have to rehearse a little more, but basically you're going to change the tone of what you're saying. It's not a personal confession this time. Now you're a man who's been given direct orders from his superior. Only you've become disgusted with yourself for letting it go this far. You're not going to wait until your own Nuremberg trial and then claim you were 'just following orders'. You're going to come clean. You're going to name names, and then you're going to give a little pep talk to the American public." Henry Bowman explained in detail what it was he expected Blair to say.

Wilson Blair was horrified. "I can't say that!" he protested.

"Sure you can," Henry said easily. "You've been making up worse bullshit all your life. And it's not like it's actually going to get used," Henry lied. "I just need my own insurance policy, if you get what I mean." Wilson Blair didn't, but he wasn't going to argue about it. He was almost home free.

"Excellent!" Henry Bowman said as he switched off the camera for the final time. "Stand up, turn around, keep your hands behind your back where I can see them, and walk slowly towards the back door. We're going out to the van, and get you on your way to your new identity."

As Wilson Blair followed the instructions, Henry transferred the revolver to his left hand. With his right, he reached over to the back of the couch where he had laid the hammer he'd used to nail up the backdrop. He picked it up and adjusted his grip on the leather handle. The tool was an Estwing, like the one Walter had given him when he was a toddler, but several ounces heavier. Allen Kane, like Henry and Henry's late father before him, liked good tools.

"You must tell me what agency you work for, that planned all this," Wilson Blair said wi th what he hoped was a smile in his voice. He was emotionally and physically exhausted.

"You haven't heard of us," Henry answered from behind him as they stepped out into the night air. Then, because he, too, was tired, Henry Bowman thought of an utterly frivolous lie, and he allowed himself the one bit of whimsy. Guy probably doesn't read the same authors I do Henry told himself.

"We answer to the President," Henry said, "though I've got a lot more respect for my immediate superior. The few people who know about us call us the Wrecking Crew."

Henry swung the sixteen-ounce Estwing in a smooth arc, giving his wrist the practiced snap at the end of the swing that his father Walter had taught him decades before. The polished face of the hammer struck ATF agent Wilson Blair dead center on the occipital protrusion at the back of his head, and he collapsed as if pole-axed.

Did I kill the fool? Henry wondered as he bent down to feel for a pulse at the man's neck. Henry suddenly had an image of his fifth-grade class, where he had learned to find a pulse both on himself and on others. I guess my expensive education has some practical uses after all he thought as he felt the faint throb through the man's skin. For an instant, Henry longed to be sitting in Allen Kane's 2 1/2-ton army truck, driving on mining roads in Idaho, miles away from his current predicament. Then he abandoned that indulgence and went back to his current tasks.

Henry Bowman backed the white Ford van up to the house and opened the dual back doors. With considerable effort he got Wilson Blair in and on top of the plastic garbage bags he had loaded in the van earlier. The man weighed no more than Henry, but by the time he was lying in the back of the van, Henry was breathing hard. Now I know why they call it 'dead weight' he thought distractedly. The corpse of the young woman agent out by the side of the building proved less difficult to handle.

Henry walked back to the workshop. When he returned, he was carrying a plastic 5-gallon bucket, which he tossed in the back of the vehicle on top of the hand saws and the kukri knife. Gloves Henry remembered, and went back in the workshop for them.

Henry Bowman returned to Allen Kane's house, where he retrieved some clothes and also towels from the washroom. He put the clothes next to him on the passenger seat as he climbed into the cab of the van. Then he released the parking brake, dropped the idling vehicle into DRIVE, and drove out of the yard.

"Little midnight snack, guys," Henry said softly to the snuffling animals as he climbed out of the van. "Have it ready for you in a few minutes." He had changed into the pants and shirt he had taken from the house; his own clothes lay on the van's passenger seat. If you got a frog to swallow... Henry told himself for the fourth or fifth time as he pushed his thumb against the checkered stud on the blade of his Applegate folder. The two-edged blade swung open and locked into place, and Henry went to work. In less than ten minutes, G.G. Jackson's corpse was nude, and a pile of shredded clothing and duct tape sat under the back end of the van. Wilson Blair lay nude and unconscious in the back of the van with his head hanging over the back edge of the rear bumper.

Henry Bowman put his gloves back on, placed the bucket he had taken from the workshop directly under Wilson Blair's head, then found the man's pulse in the side of his neck. He looked at his Applegate fighting knife, on which he had always maintained a near-razor edge. It was a habit he had learned long ago from his Uncle Max.

Your turn's come up, ace. Wish the Colonel was here to see this Henry thought irrelevantly. He 'd probably show me how to do it more efficiently, not break so much of a sweat. With a decisive movement of the hand that held the sharp blade, Henry Bowman opened up a large incision in Wilson Blair's carotid artery, then quickly adjusted the position of the bucket so as to catch the blood which pumped relentlessly out of the wound in the man's neck.

It took over ten minutes for Wilson Blair's heart to stop beating. By that time, there was over a gallon of fresh blood in the bucket. Bowman stowed the folding knife, picked up the big, curved instrument from Nepal, and relieved the fresh corpse of its head, hands, and feet. Blair had been larger than four of the other five, but by this time, Henry had had enough practice to have his technique down. He had learned back at Kane's house that the Ghurka kukri was far more efficient than a hacksaw for some of what was required, although it was slightly messier.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation he found himself thinking. If I get tired of geology and start-up companies I can always find work at the slaughterhouse. It took less than three minutes to remove all of the identifying attributes from the man's body and pack them in a plastic trash bag.

"You didn't really think I was going to let you back in the gene pool, did you?" Henry found himself saying out loud to the disembodied head as he pushed it into the sack. Jesus! he thought as he clamped his mouth shut. I'm losing my mind-talking to a dead man's head! He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head violently. Come on, guy he said to himself. Lots more work to do here. Then he started in on the corpse of G.G. Jackson.

Henry Bowman was literally drenched with sweat and blood when he stopped to take a break. A pang of intense hunger swept over him, followed immediately by a wave of nausea at the idea of eating under the circumstances. He closed his eyes and waited for the feeling to pass. Henry was suddenly reminded of something a rugby teammate from college had told him during a game when Henry was doubled over, exhausted, and the play was halfway down the field: 'You're wiped out and you need rest. You can't run to where the play is. That's okay. You don't have to. Walk towards the ball-you'll get there, and you'll get your rest on the way. But if you just stand here, you'll never get back in the play.'

Henry smiled at the thought, opened his eyes, and let the smile vanish. You were right, Randy. You got to keep moving, even if it's real slow. He grabbed the biggest section of what was left of Wilson Blair under the arms and with an effort dragged it out of the van and let it fall in the dirt. Henry glanced involuntarily around him, then turned towards Blair's body. Suddenly, Henry bent over and grabbed the dead man's penis and scrotum with a gloved left hand. With a strong sweep of his right arm he cut off the shriveled member and tossed it backhand into the hog pen. Henry watched as it flipped over in the moonlight, revolving around its center of gravity before falling with a faint slap into the dirt of the pen. The nearest hog snuffled once and immediately began devouring the unexpected delicacy.

Fuck it Henry thought. Six of 'em shouldn't take as long as one cape buffalo. They knew what they were doing, and they died quick. Not like the kids in Mt. Carmel.

When he thought about it that way, gutting out and quartering the bodies of six headless, handless, and feetless ATF agents and feeding them to Dale Price's hogs didn't seem so bad.

Dawn was threatening to break by the time Henry Bowman had cleaned up again, stripped the two machine guns to bare receivers, rearranged Allen Kane's living room, and stowed the dead agents' weapons and other useful effects in the BMW's saddlebags. He looked at the back door, with its lower hinge blasted away. Drive partway to Ohio, and sack out in the van? he wondered. The hell with it he decided. I'm about to pass out on my feet. He drove the van behind one of the outbuildings, threwa tarp over it, and returned to Allen Kane's bedroom for a nap.

As Henry set the alarm and laid the set of ATF garb and credentials on the floor beside the bed, he thought of one more thing. He retrieved the battery-powered tape recorder from the living room, rewound it for a few seconds, and listened until the end. Then he switched it to Record, and repeated the words. He rewound it, hit PLAY again, and listened to the two versions of Wilson Blair. A little higher, but less nasal Henry thought. He rewound the tape back to the start of his impression, recorded another attempt, and listened again. Better, he decided. I'll practice some more in a few hours he promised himself, and fell back onto the bed.

In thirty seconds he was snoring softly.

"Coffee, sir?" the stewardess asked. Alex Neumann opened his eyes and looked up.

"Oh. Ah, no thank you," he said with a faint headshake. The FBI man went back to the calculations he'd been doing in his head.

Roundtrip airfare, even if they got it dirt cheap, got to be a few hundred. Ten nights lodging, another few hundred. Food, maybe a hundred. Transport, fifty bucks, maybe. He chewed his lip. What does a Sexual Harassment Awareness Training instructor make, I wonder? Couple thousand? Call it two hundred for my share. Twelve hundred so far. Other staff, maybe? Use of the facilities? He closed his eyes again. Probably add up to more than two thousand by the time it's all over. That's more than a semester of college cost me. Neumann sighed. That's not even counting the fact that they're still paying my salary. And I won't be doing jack shit for the Bureau for the next two weeks.

FBI Agent Alex Neumann was wrong about the total per-agent cost of the special course he was about to attend. His estimate was much too low. He was also wrong in thinking that for the next two weeks, the Bureau was going to do nothing but waste his time.

"I'm sorry," the middle-aged man said to the eight employees standing before him. There were tears in his eyes.

"Mr. Billings, if I lose this job, I could lose my house."

"I know Jackie," he said softly. "But there isn't any job any more. Ace Cleaners is bankrupt. I don't own this place any more-the bankruptcy trustee holds the title."

"What are they going to do with it?" another woman asked. Billings licked his lips.

"I don't know. Probably level the place."

"Isn't it those other people's fault, over at Wingfoot?" another asked. Billings sighed.

"It's both of ours. We had the fluid. If we hadn't, they wouldn't have been here. And this has put them into bankruptcy, too." There were reluctant nods of understanding.

Billings looked around at the faces of the people who had worked for him, some for over twenty years. It was the saddest moment of his life.

It was almost 10:00 a.m. by the time Henry Bowman pulled out of Allen Kane's driveway and headed east. He was wearing the dark blue clothing from two of the slain agents, and was carrying Wilson Blair's credentials in his right hip pocket. On his head he wore a dark pair of sunglasses, and one of the ATF agents' navy blue billed caps. He was convinced that no one seeing him through the dusty windshield would be able to later give any description more detailed than "clean-shaven white man, somewhere between thirty and sixty-five."

Henry had spent ten minutes in Kane's shop loading eighteen very low-velocity rounds for his .44. He had also scrounged every one of Allen Kane's jerrycans that he could find, and filled them from Kane's storage tank. An extra forty gallons of fuel gave him a few more options, if things did not go well.

On the way to Columbus, Ohio, Henry Bowman used the portable tape deck and practiced mimicking Wilson Blair, even after he felt he had the man's speech pattern down cold. Extra practice never hurt Henry told himself, then smiled. Hey, hotshot, it's why you're still alive.

"Hello?" said the accented voice.

"Cruz, it's Blair," Henry Bowman said into the mouthpiece of the pay phone, then held his breath. "Hey, how'd it go at Kane's?" the man asked immediately.

"Perfect," Henry answered, determined to keep his sentences short. "But there's a possible problem at Millet's house. Millet may have set a trap."

"What?"

"Yeah. I'm sending a specialist-guy used to work bomb squad-to go in first. He's on his way to pick you up and go over everything. Name's Eric Cutter. He's on his way right now, driving a white van. Where are the others?"

"J.P.'s here with me. Heywood and Mary are over at Heywood's place, I think."

"Good. I'll have Cutter pick them up, too. There's a lot you'll have to go over, from what we found at Kane's, and it tightens our schedule, so don't make Cutter sit out by the curb." He paused, then gave his parting comment. "We're a third of the way there, Cruz.

Let's nail these bastards."