Harry looked away as if he were too embarrassed to answer. Bullert wasn’t so self-conscious. “I need a favor,” he said.
“What kind of favor?”
“Will you help?”
“What kind of favor?”
“It’s for your country.”
Uh-oh, my inner voice said. For Bullert to play that card so early in the conversation …
“A wise man once said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” I told him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You wouldn’t be shamelessly appealing to my love of country unless something went splat and now you need assistance cleaning up the mess. Am I right?”
Bullert gave Harry a sideways glance. Again he seemed to want help, and again Harry looked like he wished he were somewhere else.
“Have you ever heard of Operation Fast and Furious?” Bullert asked.
“Is that the title of the new Vin Diesel movie?”
“We’re serious, McKenzie.”
“Yes, I know about Fast and Furious. It was in all the papers.”
“What do you know?”
“It was the name of a sting gone bad. A few years ago, the ATF—you guys—and some federal prosecutors supplied gun dealers with seventeen hundred weapons, the plan being that you would track the weapons and then arrest the dealers and their customers when they illegally resold them to the Mexican drug cartels. Only you screwed up—you lost track of the guns. Now they’re popping up at crime scenes all along the border. There’s evidence that they might even have been used to kill our own guys. Congress found out, hearings were held, disgruntled ATF agents and other whistle-blowers testified, high-ranking officials lost their jobs, the administration was embarrassed—just another sunny day in our nation’s capital.”
“We’ve recovered about half the guns one way or the other,” Bullert said. “Still can’t account for the other half, though.”
“Butterfingers.”
“A couple days ago, we got a lead.”
“What lead?”
“I need to tell you something, but it must be held in strictest confidence.”
I didn’t respond. Again Bullert sought help from Harry. “McKenzie can keep a secret,” the FBI agent said.
Bullert rubbed his face and then set his hands palms down on the table in front of him. He stared at the table, studying it carefully as if he wanted to commit it to memory.
“Some of the guns have shown up along the Canadian border,” he said.
“Where?”
“Northern Minnesota.”
“Ahh, c’mon…”
“We apprehended a man armed with an AK-47 that we sold in Arizona. He was attempting to rob the box office of a music festival near Grand Rapids; the Itasca County Sheriff’s Department arrested him. There were five people involved. Four of them got away clean. Skarda—his car broke down, an old Saturn, blew a timing belt during the getaway. A patrol car rolled up; the deputy didn’t even know about the robbery. He saw the AK on the seat and said, ‘Hey.’”
“Top-flight police work all around,” Harry said.
“The suspect’s name was David Skarda,” Bullert said. “We think he’s a member of a crew called the Iron Range Bandits.”
“The what?”
“That’s what the Duluth News Tribune named them. They appeared about a year ago—robbed a couple of grocery stores, a bar known to cash payroll checks, never making much more than ten thousand dollars and usually less. So far they haven’t hurt anyone that we know of. Sooner or later that’s going to change, though.”
“Yeah, it will,” I said. Their fault, the victim’s fault, nobody’s fault—if they kept thieving, sooner or later someone would get shot. It was as inevitable as the rising of the sun.
“Skarda had no previous record, so we thought it would be easy to flip him, but he won’t be flipped,” Harry said. “Won’t tell us anything. He’s facing a four-year jolt and seems content to do it all.”
“Which means he knows nothing about prison,” I said. “Which means he’s probably not a career criminal.”
“Or it could be he doesn’t want to rat out his family,” Bullert said. “That’s what the Itasca sheriff thinks. He wants to look into it. We’re holding him back. We’re holding everyone back—the BCA, too.”
“Why?”
“The guns, McKenzie. We need to get those damn guns off the border.”
“Just because Skarda is stand-up doesn’t mean the rest of his people are. You lean on them, someone will talk.”
“What if they don’t? What if the gunrunners learn that we’re looking into it and get spooked?”
“What if, what if—what do you want me to do about it?”
“We’ve arranged for Skarda to escape custody,” Harry said.
“We want you to go with him,” Bullert said. “Infiltrate the crew.”
“Sure,” I said. “Just like they do on TV.”
“We’re not asking you to stop the gunrunning,” Harry said. “We’re not asking you to arrest anyone. All we want is a name.”
“And a location,” Bullert said.