Cletus didn't vomit. I was relieved. His face began to redden, though, as he looked at each of us in turn. His gaze kept moving back to Volont, and he finally said, "What do you want from me?"

"We should confer…" was about all Gunston got out.

"No!" Cletus was scared silly, and getting pissed off that his attorney seemed to be dragging his feet at his salvation. "Just promise me protection. That son of a bitch is a professional killer!"

We quickly completed what Davies later said was the "fastest, strangest" deal and information exchange he'd ever done.

Mercifully, it was also vomit-free.

Cletus was given federal protection, and his charge of two counts of Conspiracy to Commit Murder was reduced to Obstruction of Justice, to which he would enter a plea of guilty. Quite a deal, indeed. Until you consider that, if tried in Nation County, he probably would have gotten at least as good a result.

In exchange, he gave us Gabriel on a platter. Well, as far as I was concerned.

Jacob Henry Nieuhauser, whom he had known for several years, had come to him for a place to stay while he scouted "five handy little banks" that he intended to take off. These banks apparently had been part of his original plan back in June of 1996, when events in our county had conspired to thwart him.

What banks? Cletus didn't know. But the number five had been mentioned.

He'd let Nieuhauser, a.k.a. Gabriel, use his home, while Cletus and his wife were wintering in Florida. Low-profile, no problem. He'd received the phone call, all right. From Gabriel, who had told him that he'd become aware that he was under surveillance by some cops for about a week or so, and had been preparing to "take measures to throw them off the trail" when the cops had broken into the house. He was certain they were cops, because they'd told him they were.

I thought that was pretty sad.

Cletus said that Gabriel had killed one, then tried to question the other. The second brother tried denying that they were cops, even though they'd originally said that they were. Since the young man was adamant about it, after a few minutes of questioning, he'd killed him, too. It had been "necessary." His cover was being blown.

Of course there had been no information. Neither of the poor damned Colson brothers could possibly know shit about what Gabriel wanted. Talk about terror. Especially for the second one to go. I tried to make that very clear to Cletus, but he was so worried about himself I don't think it took.

The computers were engaged in what was called "distributed computing," a network of over 100 machines, each working on a small portion of a project. But he didn't know of what kind. Where was Gabriel now? He didn't know, but he was sure that he was around. The banks were scheduled to go down soon, and he knew that Gabriel wasn't going to be put off this time around. The cause needed money.

We made Cletus disappear this way: We called for an ambulance to come to the Sheriffs Department. When they arrived, we told them that we needed a special favor. Volont and I accompanied Cletus and his attorney in the ambulance to the hospital. Volont had called for a chopper. It arrived, and we made all the right fuss to have Cletus look as if he were on his way to a major trauma center. Put him onboard in a stretcher and everything. Four FBI agents were in the chopper. Volont insisted that Gunston accompany him. Insisted by way of placing him in protective custody. No kidding. I never thought they could really do that.

As Volont said, it kept both of them out of the way for a good seventy-two hours.

He told me that the Huey took them to Waterloo, where they would be held at a National Guard facility.

We spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how to prevent the bank robberies.

I enjoyed eating dinner in Lamar's office. Cheeseburgers delivered by Maitland PD and Judy. Being the only person in the room on a low-fat diet, to me they tasted fantastic. Somehow, I'd become convinced that, if I ate that stuff under these circumstances, it just didn't count. You know. Like when the waiter delivers the wrong thing to your table, and you get stuck with lots of gravy… I think I burned off most of the fat calories with frustration, anyway. We had real problems.

Let me just say that the bank jobs fall into two possible categories. First, there are robberies, which by definition would have to occur while there were people in the bank. Second, burglaries, which would occur when the banks were not occupied. The second was the least dangerous for all concerned, but the first was a hell of a lot more likely to get you into the safe. It would very likely be open during business hours. Open meant daylight. Closed meant night.

My point, and the one that stuck the whole operation together from our end, was just what Volont had always preached. Gabriel wasn't a "criminal" type, he was a soldier. There was a very big difference in approach.

I said as much.

"What?" asked Art, in rare humor. "Are we talking air strikes here, or what?" He was happier than hell to have the double murder solved. Knowing him, I figured he was only giving us half his attention, with the other half trying to figure out how he could claim credit for the entire case.

I think the most difficult thing to do as a cop is to predict what robbery or burglary target will be hit, how the suspect will do it, and when. I've worked on Task Forces where some of the best cops around were trying, and just couldn't get it to add up.

I shared one with the group. I told about the time that eleven counties and the state were trying to bust a group that was breaking into implement dealers at night, stealing tools, chain saws, snow blowers, lawn mowers… anything that could fit in the back of a pickup or a van. By the time the Task Force got involved, these boys had done almost thirty jobs.

We had drawn in the locations of each hit on an area map. Tried to find a center of gravity for the dots. One of the cops had an MBA, and did an analysis of the center of distribution that would have earned a promotion in the real world. We tried to determine which direction they would go by date of occurrence. We tried to determine how they would possibly scout a potential target. We did sort of a market analysis on items that were best stolen in particular seasons. We tried to find where they lived by correlating locations of burglaries. We skewed the maps by driving time instead of distance from possible origins. Then…

We got information from a snitch as to who they were. We followed them, and on the third night, busted them in a dealership. So much for pure "intelligence." Oh, yes. The kicker.

"We asked them how they determined what target to hit," I said. "Turns out that they'd buy a case of beer, put it in the van with the five of them, and start to drive aimlessly around. When the beer ran out, they'd just go to whatever implement dealer was closest, and bust in. No plan. Really skewed our maps on a couple of occasions when the driver had got lost, once in the fog." I chuckled. "We never thought to correlate the radius with driving conditions on a particular night."

"The point being?" asked Art, who had also been on that Task Force.

"Well," I said, "those were criminals we were dealing with. Nobody knows criminals better than a bunch of senior cops. And we couldn't predict what they were going to do next." I looked at him. "And here we are, trying to second-guess a professional soldier. Like, what are the odds?"

He glared.

"Unless we have a professional soldier in our midst," I said, "this is going to be very interesting." I was hoping that Volont would call in somebody from the U.S. Army, as an adviser. I hoped that one for a long time.

As usual, the real problem was that we didn't have enough information. Things like "five banks simultaneously" are worthless. We needed to know just who was working with him. How competent they were. How many associates did he have? Hell, just which "five banks" would be nice! And the really big question: Why hit five mediocre banks and get little, when you could go to a metro area, hit one for the same effort, and get a lot? I secretly suspected that our lack of officers had something to do with it. George put it pretty well when he said, "Carl, nothing personal, but with two to three of you on a shift, a bank robber could be fifty miles away before you could block very many roads."