Chapter LXXVI

Not far from Gretton, Antoine Pinette stood amid tall trees, concealed by their shadows, the sound of the creek carrying to him on the breeze. Lars Ungar was beside him, a hunting rifle on his shoulder. The front of the house built from Kit No. 174 was visible through the pines, because they had ventured onto Michaud land.

"Tell me again what you saw," said Pinette.

"A car went up to the Michaud place late yesterday afternoon, driven by an older man," said Ungar. "When it left again, it was being driven by Michaud's sister, with Michaud following in that old truck he keeps out back. The two of them returned in the truck an hour later, but with no car. Then after dark, Pris picked up on lights down by that house."

Priscilla Gorman was one of the more mature women at the compound. She was also the original connection, via her brother, for the weapons and military equipment that had served to swell a number of bank balances in recent years, Pinette's among them. Back in 2013, Pris's brother had remarked to her about soldiers disposing of surplus materiel through Facebook and Craigslist. Mostly it was inconsequential kit—knives, helmets, scopes, gun sights—sold to bring in extra cash; the U.S. military might have been renowned for many things, but paying its people generously wasn't one of them. Younger enlisted men were consistently broke, and that was before some of them got into narcotics, which had a habit of sending users deep into the red.

Pris's brother, a lieutenant based at Fort Dix in New Jersey, had problems of his own arising from a gambling jones, so when Pris suggested she might be in a position to find an outlet for stock, his ears pricked up. Pris introduced him to Pinette, who had years of experience in buying and selling illegal items, weapons included. By then, Pinette had done his research and concluded there was a significant market, both domestic and overseas, for spare machine gun and rifle parts, body armor, even military generators and gently used medical devices. Admittedly, the sale of weapon parts to other countries was in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, but if Pinette was troubled by the niceties of U.S. law, he'd have found himself a proper job.

Pinette's crew started small, acquiring one or two containers at a few hundred dollars a time from trucks coming out of Fort Dix, before selling them for many multiples of the same. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began to wind down, the military had commenced shipping huge quantities of used and unused equipment back to the homeland, so Pinette had no difficulty meeting the demand. Soon, he was dealing in entire truckloads of supplies, bought for as little as $1,000 or $2,000 apiece, and sending shopping lists by email to contacts in Afghanistan detailing components to be stolen to order and included in homebound consignments.

Aided by Pris's brother, Pinette gradually established a network of providers at five military bases in the eastern and southern United States, but they moved cautiously, turning down business rather than taking unnecessary risks. More custom meant bigger shipments, which required expanding the network, which increased the likelihood of getting caught. Pinette had learned from mistakes made by a group of soldiers and civilians down in Tennessee, who were successfully supplementing their income by selling military equipment stolen from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, until a combination of greed and arrogance led to their arrest. One of the non-coms in the chain had even invited prospective buyers onto the base to choose their own weapons at $500 a time, like Fort Campbell was a fucking outlet store. The surprise wasn't that they were caught, but that it took Army Criminal Investigation Division three years to do it, which raised questions about the quality of personnel being recruited for ACID. It made Pinette glad he didn't pay taxes, if that was how the army chose to spend them.

Pinette's crew were soon clearing north of a million a year, and had so much cash that they started using some of the empty containers for storage, or burying wrapped bundles in their own yards and those of selectively blind relatives who were paid to make sure their eyesight didn't suddenly improve—and that was before Pinette graduated from gun parts to the assembled weapons themselves.

This was a more delicate affair, but one necessitated by a contraction in the availability of general equipment as the Afghan and Iraqi gravy trains ground to a halt. Pinette's operation recalibrated accordingly, focusing initially on weapons marked for disposal, progressing to those being sent for repair, and finally arriving at unfired M4 carbines, M24 and M107 sniper rifles, and M249 squad automatics. These were harder to ship abroad, but there was a ready internal market, including criminals and elements of the far right, the latter stockpiling for the day when the Chinese invaded, or the UN, or maybe just the French.

There were the Mexican cartels, too, of course, who were always in the market for guns, but by then Antoine Pinette had been politicized, even radicalized, and he didn't favor dealing with nonwhites, whatever their hue. Two of his cousins had been ripped off by a Mexican dealer in New Springville, Staten Island, and when they went looking for the guy, his buddies killed them and dumped their bodies in Brookfield Park. Pinette didn't have any compassion for junkies, family or otherwise, but he had even less for immigrant drug dealers who killed and dumped white junkies when there were more than enough junkies of other races for them to kill and dump instead. In Pinette's view, it was time for Caucasians to take a stand before there were too few of them left to put up any kind of fight at all. This had drawn him into the orbit of Bobby Ocean, who embraced the idea of arming patriots, and had half-formed dreams of establishing a community of like-minded individuals in his home state. Bobby, in turn, had guided Pinette toward Den Hickman, who barely tolerated most white folk, never mind the coloreds. Hickman was not unwilling to ignore illegal activity on his land, so long as some of that money found its way into his pocket and he received the odd pity fuck from one of Pinette's women. Also, Hickman figured that men like Antoine Pinette and Bobby Ocean would be more than a match for Ellar Michaud, their proximity to his property serving to cast a further pall over his existence.

All of which explained how Antoine Pinette and Lars Ungar currently came to be regarding Kit No. 174 and speculating on what might have become of the original driver of the car glimpsed by Ungar. Pinette was sure it wasn't anything good. The Michauds were a strange trio, a reclusive brother and two sisters, all unmarried, tending an old house in the woods. Kit No. 174 gave Pinette the creeps. He wasn't a superstitious man, but he had learned not to ignore his instincts. They told him that Kit No. 174 was every kind of wrong.

"Have you taken a closer look?" he asked Ungar.

"I've been tempted, but trespassing didn't seem worth the hazard."

"Hazard?"

"I guarantee the Michauds have sensors fixed up to let them know if anyone comes snooping," said Ungar. "When we first got here, I sent Sonny down to scope it, and he barely got within sniffing distance before Ellar came running. We stayed low on this side of the creek, but we could see Michaud scanning the area, like he knew we were out there."

"Could be he's hiding something," said Pinette.

"If he is, it's nothing worth knowing about. He and his bitch sisters live like throwbacks. They probably take turns with one another when the sun goes down."

"If it's nothing, why bother securing the house?"

"Might be the family mausoleum," said Ungar, and Pinette felt that shiver again. "But I got to admit, I have ridden Michaud about it, because I can tell how much he hates us being here."

"As long as he keeps his hate to his side of the creek."

"Which he disputes."

"Let him. The Michauds and the Hickmans will still be arguing over dirt and roots when this world finally burns."

Pinette tried to tear his gaze away from the house, but found he could not. While it might have looked abandoned, he was not convinced it was quite empty. Certain structures, even as they appeared to be uninhabited, retained about them a sense of occupation, as though a latent presence had infused the very boards. As he and Ungar observed the house, Pinette could not help but feel that the house was observing them in turn: not someone in the house, but the house itself.

"Antoine," said Ungar, "you still with us?"

Pinette started retreating up the slope.

"I need coffee," he said. "By the way, Sonny's not coming back. I had to cut him loose."

Ungar didn't need to ask why. He'd heard about the beating delivered to Sonny at the Capital. It was unfortunate. Sonny had been their Internet specialist, trawling the dark web and chat sites to seek potential recruits.

"Damn," said Ungar, following his leader. "I liked him."

"So did I, but he fell into bad company."

They crossed the creek to head back to their camp.

And Ellar Michaud watched them go.