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Farrow did not look pleased. ‘Last chance, Griffin. One more bout of buck fever, and the blue is not for you.’

CHAPTER FIVE Washington State (#ulink_c8068813-558a-5606-a6f5-3ea56443dd0a)

Special Agent Erwin Griffin—known as Griff to practically everyone—removed a pair of wire-rim sunglasses from his faded blue eyes and slipped them into his pocket. The snowdusted mountains to the east caught the last of the daylight like blunt rock fingers with flaming tips. The interior of the fire tower cabin was quiet, just a soft, stubborn whistle of wind through the boards and occasional creaks and groans, like a boat caught in a slow wash. Rising forty feet above the ridge, supported by a slender lattice of iron beams and cedar planks, the cabin peered over the listless crowns of the second-growth hemlocks and gave a good vantage on the valley to the east.

Griff had occupied the cabin for two days, tending a telescope, two pairs of high-powered binoculars, digital cameras, and a small computer. He wore jeans and a zipped-up navy blue windbreaker with ‘FBI’ printed in yellow on the back.

The windbreaker had a pinky-sized hole to the right of the ‘I’, just below his shoulder blade.

It had been a peaceful time, mostly alone, with a Port-a-Potty and an ice chest full of sandwiches and canned ice tea. Time to think. Time enough to wonder why he hadn’t worked for the Forest Service or become a hermit. It seemed all his life he had been chasing and catching. He had hundreds of felony arrests and convictions to his credit. He had helped lock up bad guys and sometimes judges and juries threw away the keys but it never seemed to do a damned bit of good. There were always more.

Tides of crime, sweeping in, sweeping out, always leaving the bodies behind. So many bodies.

Griff wiped his eyes and prepared to move things around in preparation for the coming darkness. At night all he had was a single red lantern mounted under the lookout’s north-facing window. It made him look like a submarine captain.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Cap Benson said, pushing up through the hatch with a whuff of steaming breath. Benson was with the Washington State Patrol, thirty-seven years old and a twelve-year veteran of their SWAT team. Griff had known Benson for ten years. Benson owned a mobile home on a two-acre lot twenty miles down the road. He had a slender, pretty wife who liked to wear aprons and bake bread, and a white scar crept down his neck—terminating, Griff knew, at an unnatural notch in his clavicle. He was in better shape than Griff, who was pretty fit for his age, and the whuff was just an expression.

They had last seen each other at a big drug lab bust in Thurston County the month before.

‘I’m going crazy up here,’ Griff deadpanned. He twitched an eyebrow, held a stick of Doublemint gum between his front teeth, pulled back his lips, and waggled it. ‘Hey, look,’ he said. ‘I’m FDR.’

‘You need a long black holder,’ Benson said, unfazed.

‘For gum?’ Griff fixed Benson with a squint. ‘That would be silly.’ He pulled the gum in and started chewing.

‘Any luck?’ Benson asked, walking toward the window that faced the valley.

‘Today, a couple of women. A few kids. No animals. It’s quiet. They’ve been burning trash in barrels.’

‘What about the Patriarch?’

‘Not a sign.’

‘Your Jewish law center guy should be here in a few minutes. He’s wearing snow pants. Looks like a cheechako.’

‘Maybe, but he knows everything there is to know about Chambers.’

‘You sure you don’t want to just hand this over to us?’

‘Thanks, Cap, but I guarantee you don’t want it.’

‘We’re awesome and eager, Griff.’

‘Right,’ Griff said. He called up the stabilized image on the computer screen and showed Benson what he had been looking at all day. Three and a half miles away, green spruces, loblolly pines and sapling cedars spotted the seventy acres around a big gray weather-battered farmhouse. Sixty yards to the east stood a large barn. Right now, the farm looked deserted. No visible cows or other livestock. No dogs.

‘Nice,’ Benson said. ‘Kind of place I might like to retire. I’d paint the house, though.’

It was a pretty place, a mile from the nearest road, serene and quiet on a chilly but clear April evening. Nothing like the Old Testament desert where sun-dazzled, long-bearded patriarchs stashed their wives and ruled their tribes. Though there was a fire on the mountain—the high snows looked as if they were burning.

Judgment light.

‘You sure it’s him?’ Benson asked.

‘We’ll have a positive ID soon enough,’ Griff said. ‘Pass me those binders, will you, Cap?’

Benson reached across to the small table and handed Griff three thick white binders filled with photographs. Griff laid them out under the binoculars and opened each one to a good photo or mug shot, for his next visitor. They could hear his footsteps on the narrow stairs.

A shaved tanned head crowned by a plain black yarmulke poked up through the hatch and swung a green army duffel bag onto the floor with a thump. ‘Ahoy there. Anybody home?’

‘Come on in, Jacob,’ Griff said. ‘Good to see you.’

The small, skinny man stood up from the step below the hatch, climbed onto the cabin’s rough board floor and brushed his baggy black snow pants with one hand. He wore a sleeveless purple down vest over a spotless and pressed white business shirt. ‘Always good to hear from you, Agent Griffin,’ he said. ‘You have such interesting things to show me.’ He grinned at Benson, who nodded back, polite but noncommittal, a seasoned cop greeting an outsider who was not himself a cop.

The hatch creaked again, making them all jerk. Griff was not disposed to like whoever climbed up through that hatch, not now. Three was already a crowd. Worse still, this one was female: thin strong hands with chipped nails, hazel eyes, mussed auburn hair, high cheekbones, and a goddamned gray power suit.

‘Pardon me, gentlemen.’ The female stood up straight and wiry on the drafty wooden floor and pulled down her jacket. She wore black running shoes and white socks, her only concessions to the woods and the climb.

Griff scowled at Levine. Levine lifted his brows.

‘Apologies for interrupting,’ she said. Griff hadn’t seen this woman in over ten years and it took him a moment to go through his memory, age a face, and place her name.

Griff introduced them all. ‘Cap Benson, Washington State Patrol SWAT team, this is Jacob Levine from the Southern Poverty Law Center. And this is Special Agent Rebecca Rose. She investigates bioterror. That was what you were working on the last time we met.’

‘Still do,’ Rebecca said.

‘Pleasure,’ Benson said. They firmly shook hands, but all three men looked like boys whose tree-house club had been violated.

‘What brings you here, Rebecca?’ Griff asked.

‘Someone down in that valley has taken delivery of contraband biotech equipment. Fermenters, incubators, some driers.’

‘No shit,’ Griff said. ‘And…?’

‘Don’t mind me,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m just an observer.’ She whistled at the array of binoculars and the telescope. ‘There must be two dozen guys loafing around at the trail head. What have you got down there?’

‘Ant farm,’ Griff said.

‘Sonofabitch,’ she said. ‘Can I see?’

‘Be my guest.’

Rebecca applied her eyes to the biggest pair of binoculars. ‘Your ant farm doesn’t have any ants,’ she murmured.

‘Just wait,’ Griff said.

The operation had begun a week ago, following a complaint about illegal fireworks. Intense white flashes like giant morning glories had bloomed in the middle of the night over the hills around the farm, letting loose echoing booms, two a night for three nights in a row, bright enough and loud enough to wake up the nearest neighbor—a sleepless old codger who lived with his Airedale four miles away.

Two days after the complaint had been filed, a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy had driven down the long dirt road to the farm to investigate. He had found a hidden homestead with a concrete and wood-frame barn, one large old house, and a newer, smaller house at the rear, almost lost in the trees. A polite knock at the door of the main house had roused a gray-bearded, broad-shouldered, proud old man with brilliant green eyes. The old man had two middleaged women, slender and worn-looking, living with him in the big house. Six kids had come around from the back and stood in the yard, ranging in age from three to seventeen, all well-fed, conservatively dressed, and well-behaved. Respectful. The deputy had asked about fireworks and been met with puzzled denials and the offer of a hot cup of coffee and fresh sourdough biscuits. He had been invited into the house. The deputy had removed his Smoky hat and held it to one side, leaving his gun hand free. Taking it all in.