Hardline

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

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Special Agent in Charge Emily Alvin was our boss, the supervisor of an FBI task force investigating anti-government subversive groups like Ultima Thule. Not a high priority task force or a high priority investigatory target. We weren't even convinced they really existed. Even their name was too strange to be real, except for the fact that the guy who told us about it was probably too stupid to have made it up himself.

“They hate the government, we all want to take their guns away and make them use picture IDs when they sign checks. Or some such s**t,” said Duffy.

I chuckled. It was true enough, these groups all start to seem kind of the same after a little while, although there are always little differences between them. Ultima Thule had only just appeared on the FBI's radar, when a Confidential Informant told us they were responsible for a string of bank robberies and an armored car heist or two. The CI in question was in the hotel room right now, and we were supposed to sit tight unless he started screaming for help. The target of this operation was a man named Eugene Huhn, a big wheel in the UT according to what the informant told us. The CI was supposed to meet with Huhn as they had previously agreed, and talk him into meeting a supplier who could sell him a large quantity of high explosives. That supplier would actually be an FBI agent such as Duffy or myself, and then we would have Mr. Eugene Huhn and the UT with him. Assuming any of it was real in the first place.

Under normal circumstances, we wouldn't be there in the parking lot babysitting the CI. Paid snitches are usually on their own, and if their luck runs out it just runs out. But SAC Alvin thought there was something funny about the whole situation, and she didn't want us to let the informant out of our sight.

The truth is, we weren't at all sure we bought his story. We checked up on “Ultima Thule” but we didn't find anything about an organization with that name. Ultima Thule was just an imaginary island that was supposed to exist somewhere far in the north but was probably just a confused traveler's report about ancient Scandinavia. Then there was some sort of Proto-Nazi occult brotherhood called the Thule Society before World War II.

So if we could draw any conclusions from that it would probably be that they were some kind of Nazi outfit, except the CI just stared at us blankly when we brought that up and said we didn't understand anything at all. Maybe if we ever brought them in we would learn something about what they actually believed – not that it really mattered much. They could be militia guys or Sovereign Citizens or even communists, the real issue for our task force was that they wanted to overthrow the U.S. Government but had some ideology other than radical Islam. That's what our task force specialized in.

“No, seriously,” said Duffy. “I'll go over what we've got.”

He opened up the file and started skimming through it.

“CI's name is Robert Hitchcock, street name Bobby Bullet. Pulled over by highway patrol with a s**t-load of meth and some AR-15s, decided he wasn't so gangster anymore. Started claiming he had info on all these bank robberies and armored car heists, a string of jobs going back five years or so. No one ever thought they were connected before. First National in Chicago, Stirling Bank in Detroit, Hometown Credit Union in Pennsylvania – a whole bunch of others. If he's telling the truth, these guys are nomads, roaming around from one place to another so no one thinks to tie it all together. Then the armored car jobs start, most of those in the Boston area so we always assumed it was Irish Mafia remnants out of Charlestown. Then some more bank jobs in Maryland and Delaware. Almost like they were slowly drifting this way on purpose.”

“Or those were actually all done by different people and he just kept a list to BS us with if he ever got picked up. They had a handful of real scores, right?”

“Not at first anyway, but they got better over time. Their first bank only got them a few hundred, but some of the armored car jobs were professional work. One got them about a quarter-mil. Based on what Bobby Bullet is saying, they put some of the profits into meth and some into guns. He claims they already spent it all, but Alvin doesn't believe him.”

“I wonder why not.”

Duffy shrugged. “I don't question that woman's instincts. You know her rep.”

“You've got a point there. But the whole thing is fairly dubious. I mean, what kind of gang moves around that much? Don't any of these people have homes to go back to? And why have some of their jobs been so much more professional than others? There's a big difference between taking a few hundred from a bank teller and a quarter-million dollars from an armored car.”

“He says they got some help from an outlaw biker in Boston, showed them how to do the serious stuff. I don't completely buy it either, but Alvin seems to. And like I said...”

“Yeah, sure. Hey, here's a question,” I said, suddenly nervous. “How would we know if he needed help? I mean, that music is loud.”

“We were just supposed to confirm the basic facts. He said this Huhn guy and a couple of skinhead types would be waiting for him there – okay, they were. We can hear their shitty music, no offense. Confirming that he wasn't just making it all up completely was basically our entire mission here. He's supposed to sell them on the idea of buying explosives and set up a meeting so we can f**k them all over. Is this guy's well-being suddenly a priority for us?”

“It probably should be, if we actually want to make this case.” We hadn't been working it long enough to feel like it was our case to make in the first place. Bobby Bullet was originally the property of another agent based on the bank robbery angle, but somehow SAC Alvin managed to wrestle it away from the guy and get it assigned to our minor terrorism task force instead. I had no idea why it was so important to her, but for whatever reason she fought for it and they gave her what she wanted.

“That's assuming there's a case to be made,” said Duffy. “You want to go check on him?”

“We probably should.”

“Okay, I've got your back.”