Hunting Season (14 page)

Jared didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but then he asked Browne if he thought the intruder might be police.

“I don’t think so,” Browne said.

“Cops come in crowds. Plus, they shoot back when shot at. We’d of known by now if that was a cop. Maybe next time, we ought not to go shooting like that.”

“Paper said the FBI was lookin’ for them kids,” Jared said.

“That was almost a month ago; if the FBI thought those kids had come to the arsenal, we’da had a swarm of those sum bitches all over the place.

Hasn’t been anything like that. We just have to be extra careful for a while. We’re getting pressure in the tanker truck now. Won’t be much longer, I can do this thing.”

Jared passed a clunker out on Route 11. “Kinin’ those kids, that could be some serious heat,” he said.

Browne realized that the incident with the intruder must have spooked Jared a little more than he had anticipated.

“We didn’t kill anyone. That flash flood got ‘em. There wasn’t anything we could do about that. And we did save the girl.”

“Them was our traps, got them kids,” Jared said, slowing as he approached the darkened traffic signal marking the entrance intersection to the arsenal.

“They shouldn’t have been in there,” Browne said.

“The Lord sent that flood. It was their time, that’s all.”

Jared was silent as he pulled into the turn lane. There was no one coming the other way, so he was able just to make the turn and douse his lights as he went between the barrels. Browne bit his lip, thinking about what Jared had said. The real question now was what was he going to do about the girl when Judgment Day came. She’s insurance, he kept telling himself.

But if the cops came, and they were holding the girl, she could tie them to what had happened to the other two.

Jared drove up toward the main gate through a corridor of tall pines, then slowed to make the turn onto the fire-access road.

“The copper is over there,” he said.

“Behind that there transformer box.”

He stopped the truck, and they both got out. The night was still and clear, but with no moon. The only sound came from the night insects and the ticking noise of the truck’s engine cooling down. A big semi went whining down the highway below, but they were completely out of sight.

They loaded the heavy copper plates into the bed of the truck, closed the tailgate, and then drove on down the access road until they came to the rail spur gates, where they stopped. Jared began to unload the plates while his grandfather went to move the wire and unlock the interior gates. They hauled the plates through the two sets of gates.

“We’ve been usin’ these here gates for some time now,” Jared said when all the plates were inside the perimeter.

“Maybe we ought to lay down some things, like we got along the creek.”

Browne thought for a moment. That might not be a bad idea.

“Traps, you mean?”

“It’s all gravel and concrete from here on in. I was thinkin’ more along the lines of a counter. One a the guys in the Hats has one, Radio Shack ‘lectric-eye deal. Tell us if it’s just us chickens walkin’ through here.”

Jared belonged to a backwoods militia group, which called itself the Black Hats. They got together up on the West Virginia line to drink beer, tell racist jokes, and shoot up the woods, pretending they were guerrillas.

Browne thought they were all a bunch of beer-bellied retards. William would never have stooped to that crowd. Jared, on the other hand, probably fit right in, but he kept that sentiment to himself.

“I agree,” he said.

“Bring one next time.”

Edwin Kreiss was making his way from building to building along the shadows of the main street of the upper industrial area, when he heard the

truck. He had come up the rail spur from the switch point off the main Norfolk & Western line an hour ago. He had not discovered Browne’s arrangements with the rail gates; he had simply climbed the fence a hundred feet from the gates, covering up the barbed wire on the top with the rubber floor mat from his truck. He had come in to make a one-night reconnaissance, so he’d brought only water and a chest pack with some implements of his former trade. His plan was to creep the main industrial area to see if he could find any signs of human activity, especially over toward the ravine on the south side that contained the creek. He stopped when he heard the truck.

The engine seemed to slow down. The sound was coming from the direction of the rail spur security gates. Kreiss looked around and found a steel ladder leading up the side of a three-story windowless concrete building that faced the main street. There was enough starlight in the clear mountain air to allow him to read the sign on the building, which said ammonia concentration PLANT. One of the complex’s internal rail sub spurs ran directly behind the building, and the ladder went up the side of the building to its roof. He listened again. The engine was quiet, or perhaps idling. Then he heard it start back up, rev for thirty seconds or so, and then shut down. They were parking it. And coming in?

He tested the ladder. It seemed to be firmly mounted. He listened again, but there were only night sounds in the air. He made his decision and hoisted himself up onto the ladder and began to climb. At the top, the ladder rails curved up and over the edge of the roof. He stepped carefully out onto the roof, until he realized that it, too, appeared to be made of concrete. There were three large skylights embedded in the center of the roof, and he went over to one and looked down. The glass was clouded with grime and dust; below, there was only darkness. He thought about using a light, but not if there was the possibility that someone was coming.

He felt a slight breeze touch his neck. He went back to the front edge of the roof, where there was a three-foot-high parapet. He knelt down behind the parapet and unzipped his chest pack. He pulled out a stethoscope, a flat cone-shaped object, and a small wire frame. He squeezed the cone open, creating a speaker-shaped object some twelve inches in diameter at the large end and one inch at the small end. He fit the cone into the wire frame and set it up on the parapet, pointing up the main street toward the rail gates, which were some three hundred yards distant. Then he screwed the acoustic diaphragm of the

stethoscope into the back of the cone and put the sound plugs into his ears. There was a faint chuffing background noise sound of the night breeze, but otherwise nothing. He waited, keeping his head down behind the parapet in case someone down below was using a nightscope to scan the darkened buildings.

After five minutes or so, he detected the first footsteps, small, regular crunching sounds coming from the direction of the gates. He smiled in satisfaction as he listened. Two sets of steps, walking slowly, close to each other. They stopped, and there was the sound of some heavy objects hitting the ground. He wanted to take a look, but the cone was telling him what he needed to know. The footsteps resumed, coming up the main street, their boots making clopping noises on the concrete, alternating with a clanking cadence when they crossed the big metal plates in the street, until they passed beneath the cone. While he waited for them to pass, he pulled out his own nightscope. He attached its external power cord to a slim battery pack in his chest pack. He gave them another minute and then rose up behind the parapet and swept the street below.

He almost missed them as they turned the corner a block away, went between two large buildings, and disappeared. Confirm two, and each of them was carrying something under both arms. One much taller than the other. He swept the street back in the direction of the rail gates, but there seemed to be nothing else stirring. Time to get back down on the ground.

He packed up the listening cone and his nightscope and climbed back down the ladder on the side of the building. Without making any noise, he moved as quickly as he could to the other side of the street and then down to the corner where they had turned. A quick look around the corner revealed a cross street with large-and medium-sized buildings on both sides. At the end of the street, about three blocks away, was what looked like a power plant. The street and the bottom of the buildings were all in shadow. He pulled out the nightscope and made a quick sweep, but no figures showed up. So they had gone into one of these buildings.

He reversed course and crept back across the front of the building on the corner, then down the alley along its side wall. He found a steel ladder, but then he hesitated, because the building next to this one on the side street appeared to be taller than the corner building. He scanned the alley and then went farther down. The alley was almost in full darkness, but it was also empty: There were no trash cans or other debris, just the bare concrete and some weeds here and there. A

noticeable chemical smell pervaded all the old concrete, and he was struck by the absence of any living thing.

He found the ladder at the back of the second building and climbed it.

Where the skylights had been on the first building, there was a row of large metal ventilator caps, whose guy wires made it difficult to move around the roof. The parapet was much lower, so he set himself up at the corner of the roof nearest the power plant, from which he ought to be able to see both ways down the cross street. He rigged out the cone device and pointed it directly across the darkened street at the bare concrete wall of the opposite building. Since he didn’t know which direction the men had gone, any sounds they made should reflect off the slab-sided building opposite if they reemerged. Just in case he had missed something, he put on the stethoscope and trained the cone to either side, first down the street and then back up toward the corner. He pointed it at each of the buildings, listening for any acoustic indication of humans inside. He did not expect sounds to penetrate all that windowless concrete, but there was always a chance of a machine making some noise. But there was nothing.

He pointed the cone back across the street and waited.

Two men. Just like last time. Now that he knew what he was dealing with, and roughly where they were, this should be entirely manageable.

Browne got Jared to help him set up the retort for the first generating batch. The copper plates were awkward to move, but they would yield a much longer sustained reaction than the wire he had been using. He would have to cut them in half to get them into the retort.

“Once we get this going, I want you to take a look around the industrial area, make sure we don’t have any close-in visitors. Got your nightscope?”

“Yep. And a three fifty-seven in my jacket, too.”

“If you see something, try to come back here and get me before you use that. I’d rather catch ‘em than shoot ‘em. See who the hell they are. Two guns are better than one for that.”

Browne set up the pump while Jared used a hacksaw to cut the plates.

The soft copper cut quickly. Browne went into the boiler hall to start the generator. He came back and cleared all the lines coming from the retort, then went into the maintenance bay to line up the fill valve on the truck’s tank. He came back and opened the acid feed line, and the reaction in the retort became audible. They waited for the pressure switch to activate the transfer pump, but it didn’t happen. Browne tapped a gauge, then tapped it again.

“Have to do something here; this thing isn’t working.”

“Can you jump it? “Jared asked, eyeing the pressure gauge. The frothing noise in the retort was getting louder.

“That safety valve is fixin’ to let go.”

“I know that,” Browne said irritably. Sometimes, he thought, Jared was a master of the obvious. William would have been suggesting solutions.

He checked the lineup with the transfer pump once more and then hurried to hook a wire directly from the supply side of the pressure switch to the hot terminal on the pump motor. The pump kicked in and the pressure began to fall off in the retort as the hydrogen was sent to the truck next door.

“Looks like I’m going to have to run this thing manually,” Browne said.

“Go take the girl her food and water, and then have a look around the immediate area. Check back in an hour.”

“All right.”

“And Jared? No messing around with that girl. Tell her to put the blindfold on, open the door, check the room, make sure she’s not hiding behind the door, leave the food, lock back out.”

Jared acknowledged and grabbed up the paper sack. Then the transfer pump began to chatter and Browne swore.

“Go on,” he said.

“Be back in an hour. This plate should be done by then and we can fix this switch.”

Jared left the control room, an unfathomable expression on his face.

He stood outside the power plant walk-through door for fifteen minutes to get his night vision back, and he thought about the girl. They had brought her here that first afternoon, blindfolded and restrained, and simply left her for several hours. Then they had come back, pausing outside the smaller door at the north end while Browne ordered her to put the blindfold back on. That had been the routine since then, each time they brought her food. She never spoke to them. She would just sit there, motionless, with her back to the door and the blindfold on her face, not even acknowledging their presence. And they, in turn, never spoke to her.

Jared knew that she had seen both of them, but only that one time. The fact that she wouldn’t speak to them kind of pissed him off. She was shining an attitude he wasn’t used to.

He stepped off into the street and headed for the nitro building.

Kreiss was wondering if he should give up his listening position and go search for the two men, when the cone picked up something. He strained to listen, but the sounds were very small, almost beneath the threshold of the night sounds. There must have been some clouds coming through, because the ambient light had diminished, throwing the streets below

into total darkness. He reached up and turned the cone to the left. Nothing.

He turned it slowly to the right. Nothing, and then a sound. A footfall?