The Bonner Incident: Joshua's War Read online

  “Agent Schmidt, if you fail to do this I promise you, I will have you thrown in a hole in the darkest prison I can find with the most sexual deviant convicts known, to use you as their personal sex toy, are we understood?”

  Schmidt’s body jolted in his chair. “Crystal, sir. I promise to insert a second magazine into my sidearm and empty it as well.”

  Griffey turned to Wagner who was pale. “I’ve got enough problems without you pulling your shit. I know what the director told you but you pull your shit, you will not leave this state with your testicles, understand?”

  Clearly mad, Wagner nodded and Moore grinned, looking down at Schmidt. “Anything else on this group?”

  “I made a report sir. They are good. We’ve been setting up on mountain tops and slopes around them. Granted, miles away, but they know. One will come out and point a laser pointer at us, letting us know. From the gear they have and the way they operate, they know our procedures, equipment and tactics.”

  Grabbing a bottle of water, Griffey took the top off. “So, you think this is the group who messed with the Stingrays and Omi boxes?”

  “Not the group at this location but associates. They have laser disruptors on the house and shop. They have a stereo outside playing music, so it’s hard to filter their voices with boom microphones. They do have radios, but they’re scrambled. I’ve asked justice to look into that since they are deputies, but the encryption is above military grade. On a lighter note, every two hours an elderly woman we’ve identified as the suspect’s mother comes out doing this,” Schmidt said and the screen showed Mrs. Anderson waving her middle finger at the surrounding mountains and everyone chuckled.

  Nodding, Moore looked at Griffey as he asked. “Schmidt, what would it take to breach them?”

  “Heavy armor and tactical air. Even with that, our losses would be high.”

  “That’s the trap Griffey. Whatever we do, don’t let anyone spring that. It’s the show of force that we need to ignore,” Moore said ominously. “If we attack, you can expect hundreds from the county to respond quickly and the rest of Idaho to follow.”

  “Agreed,” Griffey said.

  Clearing his throat, “Um, just want to point out, the suspect could be there,” Wagner said.

  “And he could be in your office,” Griffey said. “Our intelligence says otherwise.”

  The door flew open and Agent Winters came storming in, carrying a laptop and heading for Moore. “This is a closed meeting!” Wagner yelled.

  “Shut up Ivan,” Winters said setting the laptop down. She yanked the cables from Schmidt’s computer almost pulling it off the table. “It’s happened Moore,” she said connecting the cables.

  She pushed a key and a man popped up on the flat screen on the wall. “Once again, our government lies. This manhunt in Idaho is like I’ve always said, a hunt for an innocent man whose only crime is fighting for what he earned and they wanted to take it away. The reports the government released saying that they were in fear for William Anderson’s safety from his own father, who the government has labeled a ‘lone wolf’ terrorist, which is against the law because Joshua Anderson is a US citizen that the government has stripped of citizenship without due process.

  “As you will see, that wasn’t an accident in Idaho, it was retaliation by a father against those that abducted his son,” the man stopped and a picture of William with a swollen face and busted nose appeared next to the reporter. “As you can see, this thirteen=year-old was a violent subject whose only crime was that his father shot three officers that were sent to kill him, so the government could take his property and money. This is the culmination of Civil Forfeiture. Watch what one father did to those that hurt his only child, a child that had lost his mother at the age of five and was being cared for by a loving stepmother now, because the government was out to kill his dad.”

  The screen shifted and the reporter was gone and a view of a small handheld video camera came on. It showed the control tent and people standing around and Griffey and Moore knew where the shot was taken from. The camera panned down showing a bomb. “This is Joshua Anderson. I do this of my own free will. You fucked with my family and now I have to kill all of you.”

  The screen blinked and it showed the bomb being placed under the fuel trailer. Blinking again, the screen showed the huge command tent and Moore sighed, seeing some people he knew that were dead. What really bothered him was, he and Griffey were inside that tent when Joshua had filmed this only yards away.

  After they watched the second bomb placed, the screen blinked beside a cabin. “This I do in retaliation for your actions. Look on the dock for my calling card,” Joshua’s voice said and the screen went blank and the reporter came back on.

  “See? We’ve been lied to yet again. From 9/11, Waco, the Liberty incident and I can go on: this shows the government doesn’t want us to know the truth. In Joshua’s case, they don’t want people to know, you can fight back against them when they come to take from you as they continue to take from us. Give billions away overseas and here at home to placate those that won’t provide for themselves.

  “Joshua, I offer my sincerest apologies. I don’t have a big staff here and we just found your video. I swear to you, it won’t happen again. You’ve entrusted my news outlet to get your story out and I will do it. And for you in the government and those who think this was staged, Mr. Anderson sent another video.”

  The screen changed, showing it was daylight and Moore felt sick, already knowing what he was looking at. “Just want to show you what happens when you mess with my family. It’s 0759 and those down there have thirty seconds to live. To those innocents there, I’m sorry, but they are after my family and I will kill them all. I was just a hardworking man till they wanted it all and tried to kill me, then went after my family. If you stay near them, then you take the chance that my wrath will find you. One man can only be pushed so much and so far, and going after my family was the last straw,” he said zooming in. “Joshua’s war has started,” he said as the area vanished in a fireball.

  Winters tapped the computer, stopping the video and pulled a scrench in a plastic bag from her pocket. “This was found stuck in the end of the dock,” she said handing it to Moore.

  “Oh my God,” Griffey said. “How can we blow that off? If he had written a letter taking responsibility, we could easily blow that off, but he took video.”

  “So?” Wagner shrugged. “Give me a computer and Photo Shop and I can put SpongeBob beside the president with a bat. Get our boys to make a copy of the one video on the ridge, removing the explosion and add a chopper or something flying in the background that you can say was chopped out, and that’s how we knew it was faked.”

  “Almost five hundred people died, and you think the public will buy that?” Griffey asked.

  Wagner smiled as he chuckled. “Yeah, look what they’ve bought in the past. Everyone and their brother knows you can alter video Griffey. I bet I could go to a junior high school and get a kid to do what we want.”

  “It has merit,” Griffey said turning to Moore.

  “You know this will blow up later, but Washington wants this downplayed for now. If you do this, you make sure and tell them they’d better use the best and it better not be more than one or two people that they know for a fact, they can control,” Moore said as Winters sat down beside him, not liking what she was hearing.

  Griffey looked up at Schmidt, “If you talk about what you’ve heard, what I can do to you is nothing compared to our bosses. You’ve signed the nondisclosure, so I’ll remind you to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Sir, I only saw the briefing I presented,” Schmidt said reaching over and closing his laptop. “I’m sure I should leave before sensitive matter is discussed.”

  When he’d left, Griffey turned to Winters, “You heard, so forget what you heard,” he said and she nodded. “What else can you tell me before I get on the phone?”

  Taking a deep breath and clasping her hands so they wou
ldn’t shake, Winters cleared her throat. “The office for this news site is in Texas. The FBI served a warrant thirty minutes ago to seize all of the station’s equipment and the building and bring the founder and reporter, Alex, in for questioning. Ten minutes after they arrived, twenty state troopers arrived and escorted them off the premises. The governor of Texas held a press conference as the FBI was escorted out of the building, saying the federal government will not suppress free speech in Texas. The Attorney General of Texas has barred our warrant until reviewed by a state judge. I’m told the judge is very loyal to the governor.”

  Slapping the table, Griffey jumped up out of the chair. “I knew that man was going to run for president. He’s going to use this to get his votes!”

  “Griffey,” Moore said and pointed at his chair that was still spinning around. When Griffey sat back down, Moore leaned toward him. “You have phone calls to make. You offer your advice with your warnings as I told you. You make it crystal clear. This is only your advice and our operation is proceeding ahead of schedule.”

  Griffey nodded as Moore turned to Wagner, “When you speak to the director of the NSA, you will be courteous. We don’t need his nerds playing games with us, understand?” When Wagner nodded, Moore pointed at the door.

  Watching the door close behind Wagner, Moore turned to Griffey, “Steven,” Moore said in a low voice and Griffey jumped at hearing his first name. “After you give your advice, write a letter outlining why only one or two people would need to be involved with the video alteration. You do not write, kill or any threatening remarks about actions against them. Tell the director you are sending your recommendations on damage control according to the understanding of your orders. One will be via secured email. You will make a copy of this letter and make no note of it. Have a hard copy hand delivered to your director. The second hard copy and email print out, you hide, understand? That will be your only salvation if they attempt to burn you.”

  Loving that someone understood what was going on, Griffey nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find something that I can rush to prove we are ahead of schedule.”

  Griffey gathered his stuff and left as Winters turned to Moore. “What the hell is all this?”

  He looked at her with a grave face. “When you move up the ladder, your soul and morals are taken in exchange. If I had known that, I would still be a field agent, like you.”

  “Sir, you knew Mr. Anderson was responsible and said it that very day. This proves it, why hide it?”

  Moore stood up and gathered his papers. “So nobody can see that the monster we created is fighting back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  As Moore and the others watched his videos, Joshua was at the dugout. Only stopping at the dugout long enough to drop equipment off and gather what he needed, Joshua looked up at the drizzling rain clouds. “At least it’s not snow,” he said and headed back to the dugout.

  Walking over to the massive bear trap that’d sat on the mantle of his cabin, Joshua picked it up and grunted at the fifty plus pounds of steel. “No trapper on earth could carry more than one of these in the field,” he grunted, carrying it outside. Jack didn’t like it when Joshua strapped the heavy hunk of metal to the pack saddle.

  “Hey, don’t be an ass, this is your job,” Joshua said walking away. Grabbing the bear trap set tool and spring clamps, he looked around the dugout, “I’ll be out for a while.”

  Strapping the set tool to Jack and putting the clamps in his saddle bag, Joshua climbed on King and gave him a small kick. He had looked at the map he’d taken from the horsemen and had seen that a team was near Upper Priest Lake looking for him and the three lost members of team eighty-one. He knew where they’d been dropped off but not where they were now. He hoped he would be close enough to catch their radio report this afternoon.

  He had ridden in foul weather before and could do it, but it wasn’t his most enjoyable time. Guiding King along the slope and staying below the ridgeline, Joshua headed for Upper Priest Lake, ten miles away.

  When he stopped King on a slope overlooking Upper Priest Lake, he lifted his arm looking at his watch. “Not bad for crap weather travel,” he mumbled. Climbing off of King, he set up camp in the trees several hundred yards below the ridge. And double that, from the valley below. Using his heat tabs, he warmed up some beans and rice.

  Pulling out the radio, he turned it on by punching in the numbers he had memorized on the keypad and it came alive with traffic. Glancing at his watch, “You aren’t supposed to check in till 1800, you have a schedule, now keep it,” he said grabbing his notepad as his watch only read 1722.

  Listening in, he realized it was a team further south near Goose Creek Road, which was over thirty miles away from him. A member of the team had slipped and broken his ankle and they wanted a chopper to come in. “Keep wishing,” Joshua said writing the call signs down.

  When command told them to move north to a road for pick-up, he knew someone was in for a bad day. And the guys with him were as well, they would have to carry a man out several miles over unforgiving terrain. Tucking his notepad inside his vest, Joshua ate his rice and beans.

  “Glad only you and Jack are here,” he said looking up at King. “My farts are making my own eyes water.”

  After cleaning his bowl and putting it away, he sat looking up at the towering trees and listening to the now silent radio. A smile crossed his clean-shaven face as he thought of Sonya and William and prayed they were alright. “Team fourteen to command, come in,” he heard over the radio.

  Sitting up and pulling out his notepad, Joshua grabbed the map once again, liking that it wasn’t made from paper. From the horsemen’s notes, he knew when they went out, there were only six teams, so he grabbed the weird pen that only wrote on the map. Waiting for team twenty, the team near Upper Priest Lake, Joshua made notes of where the others were.

  “Command, this is team twenty,” came over the radio and Joshua got excited.

  “Go ahead, twenty. This is command.”

  “No sign of lost members or suspect. Found seven, repeat seven civilians in search area and informed them to leave or face detainment. Subjects left area and names and photos will be turned in upon arrival to command.”

  “Copy, team twenty, what is current location?” Joshua listened to the numbers and was impressed that someone could give a reading down to five yards, but then he realized they had the GPS units. He saw they were in a clearing south of the lake.

  “Copy, planned route?” command asked and he looked at the radio because they had never asked that before.

  “Moving up east side of lake to grid,” the voice paused and this time gave a broad grid longitude and latitude that covered five hundred square yards.

  Marking the map, Joshua chuckled, “Can’t make your toy give you information if you aren’t standing there, huh?”

  When unit twenty signed off, he listened to the last two teams as he studied the map, seeing that team twenty only planned to move eight miles tomorrow. Seeing a sloping ridge that rose up away from the lake and had a shallow draw that ran in the middle of it, Joshua bet this would be their route.

  Now that he knew where everybody was, Joshua repacked and hopped on King. When King grunted, Joshua popped the side of his neck. “This is easy ground to cover, so quit complaining.”

  With the drizzle waxing and waning, he headed south on the east side of the lake.

  ***

  As Joshua had left the dugout, Sonya and the others were in the living room looking at William’s laptop at the video the news site had put up. “Man, when Dad gets mad, he gets mad and does something about it,” William said watching the explosion again.

  “I wish he would’ve got all of ‘em,” Mrs. Anderson said walking in while carrying a plate and pushing people out of the way. “William, Nana made you and Sammy some cookies,” she said handing him the plate.

  “Thanks, Nana,” William said
, taking the plate and holding it out to Sammy who took some.

  A knock at the door made everyone turn. Gene stepped over to the door. “If someone can get through Ernest and his crew, then they have earned the right to come inside,” he said opening the door.

  A man stepped in removing his balaclava and they all smiled upon seeing it was Ernest. He looked at everyone around the laptop with the video paused at the explosion. “The man is resourceful, that’s for sure,” he said walking over to Sonya and holding out a large envelope. “A courier dropped this off. Don’t worry, we scanned it.”

  “How did you scan it?” Sonya said taking the envelope.

  “Ultrasound. I would prefer to just open it to make sure it was alright, but in this case, I made an exception. I know the handwriting. He bought three trucks from me last year,” Ernest grinned and Sonya lifted the envelope up, seeing her name and address in handwriting she would know anywhere.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped grabbing the pull tab and ripping it off. She opened the envelope and pulled out a cellphone. Looking at it, she handed it to William and pulled out a normal envelope. Looking at the large envelope, she saw it had come out of Spokane.

  “Yeah, we need to burn that, Sonya. I hope you don’t mind,” Ernest said. “That ties him to the shooting and will make you accessories after the fact.”

  Nana looked around at everyone, “Let’s give them some room, so they can read it in private.”

  “No,” Sonya said standing up. “Everyone here is willing to fight for us, if you want to know what Joshua wrote, I don’t mind,” she finished looking at Ernest.

  “Sonya, I gave my word to defend you and William at all cost. Otherwise, me and my boys would be running in the mountains assisting Joshua,” he said with a nod. “The only reason I mentioned the envelope was for you. The rest of my boys have already started actions against the feds here, and with what they’ve done alone, will get us serious prison time in a faraway land.”