Seeing my brother hiding down in the back of the Pickup phased me for a moment but it was only a moment. It would not do to show any favouritism with that almost ever present thorn in my thumb, my brother Walt.

I shook my head before saying,
“Out you get Walt. You know the drill!”

Walt slowly got out of the truck and sat on the floor. I didn’t need to tell him to keep his legs straight but crossed below the knee.

“Boss, shall I get some more cuffs from my vehicle?”

“Please do that. Give me your shotgun. That is far more effective at keeping this lot under control.”

He handed me the shotgun and disappeared into the darkness.

“Don’t try anything or you will get a load from this and at this range, it is not a pretty sight. Oh, and before anyone thinks that this is running short of ammo, this is the ten shot police version and by my estimation there are at least five rounds left.”

No one moved. My threat was obviously sinking in.

While I waited, I started to go through a list of people I’d need to get involved with this case. Then I stopped. I didn’t know what there was in the back of the truck.

Tom returned and cuffed Walt. From Walt’s expression, Tom had done the cuffs up really tight.

“Walt, you are under arrest for non-appearance at court. Even if these friends of yours manage to walk, you are going nowhere but to jail. You will not pass go nor will you collect two hundred dollars.”

We’d used to play Monopoly as children. Walt had this knack of ending up in jail. This time it was for real.

He just glared at me and grunted.

“Tom, what was it you found in the back?”

“Boss, I think you’d call it something like a missile launcher. There are three of them if the lettering on the cases is right but most of it is in that weird script that the Russkies use. One of the boxes is open. There are some other boxes that might be ammo.”

So much for the drug running theory. This was a different kettle of fish entirely. This would involve the ATF and possibly Homeland. That was no fun at the best of times.

“Well, Walt, you have really gone and done it this time.”

He didn’t answer but just scowled at me.

Then he said as cool as a cucumber,
“Where is your little bit on the side then? The bloke that pretends that they are a woman? Is that all you can get into your bed.”

“I’m here!” came a voice from the darkness.

Kelly came into view. There was nothing masculine about the figure she cut.

“Say one more word like that and I’ll be glad to add a hate crime charge to the list.”

Walt just spat into the dirt.

That was his way of giving the person it was directed at ‘the finger’.

“There is no need for that Walt. You might be my brother but you are a criminal in my eyes.”

The other two glared at Walt. They obviously didn’t know about me.
“Yes people, this is my brother or perhaps he forgot to tell you that I’m sheriff in these here parts?”

I turned to Kelly.
“Kelly, can you watch these three. I’ll go and get Barney organised to take this lump of scrap metal to the impound lot.”

I used the word ‘scrap’ deliberately. After the ATF or whoever was done with it, there would be little left other than a shell. I hoped that one them actually owned it. They’d have to stump up the costs of not only our impound buy putting the sorry thing back together again.

I handed her the Shotgun. She smiled at me.

“No problem Boss. It will be my pleasure watch over them.”

She wafted the barrel of the Shotgun under the noses of the three suspects just to make sure that they knew that she meant business.

---

It was a little over three hours later that Barney SWA delivered the bent and very muddy pickup to the impound yard. The last slide down the embankment had damaged the rear offside suspension. So much for a vehicle supposedly capable of going off road. He’d had to return to town to get his flatbed trailer. The bills were stacking up nicely.

The three prisoners were locked in the cells. Thankfully, there was room for them all without the need to share.

I’d called Sheriff Cousins on the way back to town, to let him know that there was nothing for him to do. I didn’t let on about the cache of weapons that we’d found. I reasoned that the less people who knew about it the better for at least the time being.

Tom had taken dozens of photos of the cache as it lay in the back of the Pickup. Then we’d moved everything into the Office. Normally, we’d have put them in one of the cells but they were currently occupied by our guests so they went into the store room. That was the only place apart from my office where we could put them that was at least out of sight but even so, I felt rather uneasy with all that very potent and highly illegal weaponry under the office roof.

I let Tom begin processing our guests starting with Walt. Once they were catalogued Kelly ran the prints through various Law Enforcement Databases. Walt’s came back exactly as expected apart from an outstanding arrest warrant from Santa Fe, New Mexico. The warrant was for unpaid child maintenance which as a new one for me.

The other two were well known criminals. Troy Jenkins had a ‘rap’ sheet that went right back to the age of ten when he stole his first car at gunpoint in Detroit. His last known address was the Federal Prison in Sheridan, Oregon. He’d been released from there two months previously after serving eight years of a twelve-year sentence for armed robbery of a gas station. He was on Parole which meant at the minimum, he’d be going back to serve out the rest of it. Associating with known criminals was more than enough to make that happen.

The driver was Seth aka, Sebastian aka Wilbur aka Will Smith who came from LA but his last known address was in a remote part of Montana. He was on both a FBI and Homeland Security watch list for possibly being a member of a right-wing militia that had been suspected of being responsible for a number of Bank and Credit Union heists as well as making some very nasty statements about anyone who wasn’t white to were in the news.

These were clearly not nice people and their list of crimes and associates made me even more uneasy.

Once I had all the information on our suspects I started to prepare myself for the calls I’d have to make to the ATF and FBI.

I need not have worried about that as they called me. My inquiries into their backgrounds had apparently already alerted them. I found myself speaking to an Agent McSwain from the ATF Office in St Louis.

“Yes, Agent McSwain, we have Smith and Jenkins in custody along with a third man.”

“How about a collection of eight shoulder held Missile Launchers plus twenty additional rounds. One of my officers is trying to decipher the Cyrillic on the cases to determine if they are Surface to Air or just shoulder launched anti-tank devices.”

“The third man?”

“That’s when it gets rather complicated.”

I paused for a second.

“It is my brother Walt Beecher. He has an arrest warrant outstanding here plus another one from Santa Fe.”

“No, we have not started talking to any of them but they have been mirandized and none have asked for a Lawyer which is good because we don’t have any Public Defenders in the county.”

“No Agent. I was preparing to call the ATF when you called me. I will defer to you on this case. I will feed the prisoners and inform them that another agency will be questioning them either here or at another location.”

“Sorry Agent McSwain. I’m doing this by the book. They have to be informed of any material developments in the case. This is in case they want to invoke their right to counsel. That is the law and I intend to uphold it to the letter. I do not want any judge letting them off on a technicality. I’m sure that you don’t either.”

“Who will be coming and when can they be expected? After nine tomorrow morning would be good. Then my guests will have had breakfast. Again, I’m doing things by the book. If other law enforcement agencies choose to do things differently then, that this their look out. While they are in my custody then things will be done by the book.”

I sighed as I listened to the agent. She went on about doing my duty and being a patriot and all that bullshit that Feds are almost brainwashed into saying at times like this.

“Agent McSwain, for your information, before becoming Sheriff here, I was a Military Policeman and I saw a murderer walk free because other people who should have known better, didn’t do things by the book. Tours of Iraq and Afghanistan mean that I know better than most about doing their duty. Please don’t fall into the trap of assuming that because we are out in the boonies that we don’t know what duty and patriotism is and what the law is. We are doing things by the book and while they are in my county, that is the end of it. If I see any of your agents breaking the law while in my county, they will be arrested and charged. Do you understand my rules? My house, my rules. If you don’t like it then take it up with the Governor!”

I put the phone down before she could answer. I had this mental vision of a career officer who had never really worked on the front line. She’d been asking me to do things that were borderline illegal and ones that any half decent defence attorney would jump on in a flash. That I was not going to do nor were any of my Officers while I was still Sheriff of this County.

Since Walt had been fired things in the department had changed a lot. We all trusted each other to do the right thing. Walt had been the one to try to bend the rules at almost every opportunity. With him out of the picture, and the arrival of Kelly, we had gelled into a well-oiled team. Each of us knew our strengths and weaknesses and what was even more important, we knew that we could depend upon any of the others to ‘watch our back’s should it come to that.

The only good thing to come out of the call was that the ATF would be sending a team to take control of the Pickup, the weapons and my prisoners the next day. I needed to give the good news to them and to get their food orders for the evening meal.

That made me think of Ma. She would have prepared something for Kelly and myself but we would not be there to eat it. I knew that she would not be happy and I’d get that ‘look’ from her that made me feel about ten years old again but she’d get over it.

I went into the part of the station that contained the three cells.

“I want to give you all an update. Neither myself nor any of my officers will be questioning you today. The ATF will be here to take control tomorrow. However, I do need to know what you want to eat tonight and also for breakfast tomorrow. Any questions about what I have just told you?”

I got nothing apart from some scowls which suited me fine.

I handed them the menu from Harry’s Diner and wrote down their choices.

After phoning the orders over to Harry, I called Ma.

“Sorry Ma. Kelly and I are up to our eyes in a case.”

“Ma… It involves Walt. This time he won’t be walking away with a ticking off. This time it is serious. At least Ten years jail time serious.”

“No Ma. Please don’t come in tonight to give him a few choice words. He’s well past that. He has chosen to tie up with some very nasty people and has to pay the price.”

“I’ll tell him what you said but it won’t make any difference.”

“No, we will be bedding down here tonight. We have some items of value here that need guarding.”

I laughed.
“Kelly will be going over to Harry’s shortly with our orders.”

“OK Ma. See you tomorrow.”

---

With that out of the way, I started to think about the people who might come looking for our guests and what might happen if they did just that before morning. My sense of unease and the obvious gang tattoo’s that Smith and Jenkins carried on the back of their hands suggested to me that they had friends and those friends may well be armed and dangerous.

I called Tom into my Office.

“Any joy with the translator?”

He smiled
“They are surface to air missiles. I didn’t need to translate the Cyrillic. There was a sort of instruction manual underneath the one launcher case that was open. The manual also suggests that the weapons were made in Serbia.”

My shoulders visibly sank.

“That means those three will be up on terrorism charges. Bringing down a plane is clearly Terrorism. That’s not good news at all.”

Then I said,
“Don’t let on about the missiles. The fewer who know about them the better.”

“Gotcha Boss.”

Tom nodded and disappeared.

---

Tom’s news had been bad. I had to involve the FBI. They could slug it out with the ATF over who has jurisdiction but as a potential case of domestic terrorism, they would be my first call.

I called Kelly in and briefed her on the situation.

“They need careful watching and so does the main road into town.”

“Are you expecting trouble?”

“I don’t know but these things were bought into the country for a purpose and the people that paid for them are not going to want to lose them in a hurry. We are basically sitting ducks here.”

“What sort of organisation are they with?”

“My current thinking is one of the crackpot militia’s that have dropped off the grid. They need funding and hate anything to do with ‘the man’. These things are ideal for knocking a chopper out of the sky. Take one down and unless the Army are called in, they would be safe from prying eyes. I’m sure that they’d have facilities to take down any drones and as far as I can recall, using Predator type drones inside the USA is illegal. I could be totally wrong but some organisation wants a lot of weaponry that can take down a civil airliner if they desire.”

“That would be my best guess. Strike at three airports across the country and the sit back and watch while air travel in the whole country comes to a complete stop. Remember what it was like after 9/11? Chaos was just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Either way, this is not good. I need to call the FBI.”

“Do you have to? Surely the ATF can deal with this? The last thing we want is two TLA’s having a turf war on our doorstep?”

I thought for a moment.
“Perhaps you are right. I’ll wait and see what happens with the ATF. We’ve never had to deal with them before.”

Kelly smiled.
“I did back in NYC. They stomped all over the NYPD and tried to make us out as being complicit in the crime. My then Captain smelt a rat and went to the FBI. It didn’t end well as two of the ATF agents were on the take. They went down for twenty years.”

“I think I’ll let them fight it out on their own patch.”

Kelly looked at her watch.
“I need to get the food order from Harry’s. I’ll watch them last. You get some sleep.”

I stood up and kissed her.

“Did you think that you would get messed up with stuff like this when you took this job?”

She laughed.

“I thought it would be nice and quiet. It is more like ‘Sleepy Hollow’ most of the time but, it is times like these where we earn our pay isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Thankfully, these events are not that common.”

“But they stop us from getting bored, don’t they?”

I kissed her again and watched her leave. As she did so, I wondered if I should stand for re-election when my term ends the following November. Being with Kelly reminded me that there was a life to be had outside the law but I just didn’t know what it was just yet.

---

The night was quiet apart from Walt’s snoring which didn’t make him very popular with his fellow prisoners.

They’d just finished breakfast when my phone rang.

“Hi Sue-Ellen. How was Colorado?”

“I’m back and have discovered something that will interest you.”

Before I could ask her what it was, she told me.
“I’m at the Cummings Place. You really need to see this…”

“It is ….”
As she told me I started laughing.”

“I guess that is related to the three prisoners we have in the cells. Stay right where you are. I’ll be out there shortly. See you soon.”

I put the phone down and started laughing again.

“What’s so funny?” asked Kelly.

“The Cummings place keeps surprising us. Sue-Ellen saw that the front entrance was open on her way back from Denver. She went to investigate and….”

I tried hard but couldn’t stop laughing as I visualised the scene that Sue-Ellen had described to me.

[to be continued in Part 3]