Hunting Season (25 page)

“Can you hear me?” he asked. The box transmitted his words in the softly booming tones of a giant computer-generated voice, atonal and without any accent or inflection.

Jared blinked rapidly in the glare of the lantern’s beam and tried to move again, pushing himself sideways as he tried to escape the weight of the trailer. Kreiss knew that jared’s vision would be a purple-rimmed haze for a few minutes. He waited motionless, while Jared figured out where he was. Then Kreiss reached over and lifted the handle of the jack stand one notch, which settled the trailer one-eighth of an inch downward. Jared made a terrified noise and stopped struggling. Both his hands were flat against the bottom of the trailer, as if he were going to hold it up. He had to look up and back over his shoulder even to see Kreiss.

“Can you hear me?” Kreiss asked again.

“Y-yeah!” Jared said, but his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

“Get it off a me, man. Jesus Christ! Get it off a me. Can’t breathe.”

Kreiss leaned closer.

“About a month ago, three college kids disappeared from Virginia Tech. I have evidence that one of them was at the Ramsey Arsenal. What do you know?”

Jared’s expression changed from one of fear to one of suspicion.

“Who the fuck are you, man? Why you doin’ this?”

“I know you go there,” Kreiss said.

“You and one other. I’ve been watching you. I found your traps, the ones on the creek and the other one, remember? Do you want to die here?”

Jared’s face hardened.

“Don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about.”

He still had his hands in the push-up position. They were white and trembling.

The trailer’s frame was making ominous creaking sounds along its full length.

“Sure about that’ Jared said, reaching for the jack handle.

“Don’t know—what—you’re talking about,” Jared gasped. The muscles in his upper arms were straining as he tried to push up against the trailer.

Kreiss lowered the trailer another eighth of an inch, and Jared would have screamed had he been able to muster the breath. He made a sound that was half wheeze, half whimper. His boots were pushing dirt around in an involuntary reflex. The trailer made some more creaking noises.

“Hope this jack has good 0-rings, Jared,” Kreiss said.

“I want to know about the girl. What did you do with the girl?”

Kreiss thought he saw a flash of recognition in Jared’s frightened, sweating eyes. He leaned forward, pushing the light right into Jared’s red face. Jared was trying desperately to see around the light. Kreiss moved the lantern slightly, allowing Jared to see the outsized eyes staring back at him. His lips moved as he tried to say something. It looked like he was saying, Fuck you.

“What?” Kreiss said. He wiggled the jack handle.

“You’re—one—of—them, ain’t—you?” Jared wheezed.

“You—killed-my—old—man. So fuck you!”

Kreiss didn’t know what Jared was talking about.

“Talk to me, dumbass,” he said, “or I’m going to squash you flat, right now!”

“You—do,” Jared gasped out, “she—starves!”

Kreiss experienced a flare of pure rage. He’d been right! Lynn must still be alive! He felt his heart racing and his face getting hot. It took every ounce of control he had not to release the jack and mash this creature into a bloody pulp under the trailer. He put the light completely to one side so Jared could see the fire in his own eyes through those enormous lenses.

He adjusted the volume of the synthesizer output.

“Where—are—you-holding—her?” he asked, enunciating each word very deliberately, letting the anger leak into his own voice.

Jared blinked his eyes to get the sweat out of them as he took a series of short, difficult breaths. Then he pushed up with all his might. He relaxed and then did it again, trying to get a rhythm in it, as if he were trying to rock the trailer off of his chest. All the while he kept mouthing the same thing, Fuck you. Fuck you. He actually got the trailer to move a tiny bit, and then, in a blast of adrenaline, he

accentuated the rhythm. Kreiss slammed his gloved hand against the metal side of the trailer, trying to shock Jared into stopping it. But before he could say anything, Jared heaved again and the frame member slid just off the lift point of the jack. Instantly, the jack punched through the flimsy metal bottom pan of the trailer and all ten thousand pounds of the structure crunched down to obliterate Jared McGarand in one grotesque sound. Kreiss stared in fury for a second and then slammed his hand against the trailer again and swore out loud. Then he sat back on his haunches, closed his eyes, and took some deep breaths.

Control, control, control, he thought. The dumb son of a bitch had killed himself, and taken with him the one thing Kreiss had to know. But the important thing was that Lynn was alive} She was probably being held out there in one of those buildings at the arsenal. He knew there had been at least two men operating out there. Now they were going to be one short. He had to find the other man, and do so before the other man found out about this one.

He opened his eyes and looked down at the trailer. The only sign of what had just happened was the bent handle of the jack, which was sticking out from the dirt under the edge of the trailer like a broken bone.

Then he caught the smell of jared’s corpse releasing itself. He thought about what to do. There probably wasn’t another jack available, so he couldn’t extract the body. And even if he did, he would be faced with a body-disposal problem. He had not intended for Jared to die, although he wasn’t exactly sorry.

“You do, she starves.” Good news and bad news.

He stood up and retrieved the lantern. If he left the scene as it was, Jared would eventually be found. By the second man? Could he set up a trap right here? No. If he did that, he would have to wait until the second man showed up, if ever. Meanwhile, Lynn was locked up somewhere and the clock was ticking, assuming Jared’s threat about her starving was real.

No, he wasn’t going to wait. He would pursue the second man. First, sanitize this scene, then go after the bastard. He looked back down at the trailer. He would make it look like Jared had gone under the trailer by himself for some reason, and then the thing had collapsed on him. It would stand a cursory investigation, as long as he set things right. If they got forensics into it, well, that would be another matter.

He looked at his watch. He had to assume that that tag had been tracked, so he didn’t have the rest of the night to set the stage here. The taped conversation indicated the other man wouldn’t be going back into the arsenal until Saturday night. He would sanitize this scene and then go out to the arsenal and spend Saturday looking for Lynn.

But Jared here had already rigged one trap. He could probably spot another one of those, but what if there were others? Alternatively, he could call in that FBI lady:

She had clearly offered collaboration. If the FBI believed him, they could flood the industrial area with people and search all the buildings. But what if Lynn wasn’t in a building? What if she was hidden in one of those bunkers back out there in the two thousand acres? Or in a cave somewhere?

And what were the chances of the Bureau believing him? Especially in view of the unholy alliance they apparently had going with Justice and the Agency. Charlie Ransom had been supposed to deliver a message, and now Kreiss thought he knew what that message was: We don’t have her. He’d thought of that, of course, but he had kept his end of the bargain, and thus he had no reason to think they would not keep theirs. He could, of course, be all wrong about that.

All his instincts told him that he shouldn’t trust anyone from Washington, especially in view of the surveillance tag he’d found. That was sweeper gear. Maybe someone up there had decided to move against him because Lynn had gone missing. He had known all along that the deal might not survive if circumstances changed in Washington.

Focus, he told himself. Ambush the second man, find out where Lynn is hidden, and then retrieve her.

As he walked back to the truck to get his other gloves, he realized he still had no idea what those two men were doing out there at the arsenal.

Then he realized he didn’t give a damn. In a little over twenty-four hours, even if he had to pull some guy’s limbs off one by one to find out where she was, he would have Lynn back. That was all that mattered. And she had better be unharmed.

She was alive}

Janet Carter was still disappointed with herself when she got up on Saturday morning. She had dutifully called Farnsworth the night before to tell him about the bug. There had been an embarrassed silence on the line for a long moment, and then Farnsworth somewhat sheepishly admitted that he had ordered the Roanoke surveillance squad to put a locator device on her car.

“Those Agency people made me nervous,” he said.

“I’m still not a hundred percent sure what the hell they’re up to.”

“Sir, I know I’m fairly new to street work,” she said, “but somebody could have told me.”

Farnsworth ducked that one.

“I’m curious—how’d you spot it?” he had asked.

“I didn’t. I’d proposed the Donaldson-Brown Center at Virginia Tech for the meet. Kreiss saw them put it on. He was watching from his hotel room. He told me.”

“He took a room in the hotel where you did the meet?” Farnsworth said with a chuckle.

“Told you, that guy is a pro. Just forget about the locator for the time being, Janet. What did you achieve with Kreiss?”

Janet had been unwilling to admit total failure.

“He’s thinking about it, but he made no commitments. He’s focused on finding his daughter.”

“Did you get any sense of where he’s been looking?”

“Locally. He wouldn’t admit to going into the arsenal, but he already knew that was Site R. I think he’s been there.”

“Based on what evidence?”

“Based on no evidence.”

“And that was it?”

She hesitated.

“I gave him my pager. Told him if we got anything on his daughter, we might need to get a hold of him.”

“He took your pager? It’s probably in the river by now.”

“I’m not so sure. I’m telling you—he is totally focused on finding his daughter. Why not take the pager? If we get something, he’d want to hear it.”

She realized later that Farnsworth hadn’t reminded her of the obvious:

No one in the Roanoke office was looking for Kreiss’s daughter anymore.

He did tell her to keep him informed and then hung up. She had gone back down to the parking lot to the Bureau car, where she searched for and found the tracking device. It was a lot bigger than she had expected.

She’d pulled it off the frame, and then she went across the parking lot and mounted it on the RAs personal Bureau car. Then she had driven home.

Her Saturday seminar at Virginia Tech began at ten o’clock, after which she grabbed some lunch and then went back to her Bureau car. She found a gas station, where she changed into some outdoor clothes and refueled, then drove south out of Blacksburg through Christiansburg and Ramsey, until she came to the New River bridge on Route 11. From there, according to her map, it was five miles south to the arsenal entrance. She arrived at a little before 2:00 P.M.” and discovered that she could not drive directly up to the main gates of the installation because of a concrete-barrel barrier. She got back on Route 11 and spent an hour trying to drive around the arsenal’s perimeter, but she got nowhere. Then she went back to the main

entrance road, got out, and wrestled one of the barrels out of the way. She drove through, replaced the barrel, and then drove up a short hill through a stand of trees to the main gates, where she came head-to-head with a small white pickup truck that was coming through the gates.

She pulled to one side, stopped, and parked. The pickup came all the way through the gates and stopped. She got out and identified herself to the two young men in the truck, which had a logo on the door proclaiming federal SECURITY SYSTEMS. One of them had a bad case of acne, while the other sported multiple earrings on both ears and a diseased looking metal protrusion behind his lower lip. Judas Priest, she thought, this freak has pierced a tooth} She told them she wanted to make a windshield tour of the arsenal.

They examined her credentials and badge, then told her that she could not drive onto the reservation without prior authorization. She asked them to get it, and they pointed out it was a Saturday. They went back and forth like this for a few minutes, and then they compromised by letting her park outside the main gates and walk in. They would lock the front gates using the chain and combination lock, but they would give her the combination. They warned her gravely that they would change it the next time they came through. They gave her a map of the complex and told her that the industrial area was not a place she wanted to spend much time walking around in without a mask and gloves. She asked why.

“They made bombs and shit for the Army back there,” Pimples said.

“Like lots of seriously toxic chemicals, going back to World War One? As in, a long time before there was an EPA or any rules about disposal? We, like, stay in the truck. With the windows up, okay?”

“Don’t go, like, kicking up any dust,” the pierced beauty said.

“You’ve just made a tour of the entire facility?”

“Uh, no, not this time,” Pierced said, glancing sideways at Pimples.

“We did the bunkers. We did the industrial area last time.”

“We want, like, to minimize the time in that area?” Pimples said.

“That’s why we did the bunker fields.”

She solemnly thanked them for all their assistance and terrific advice.

They waited while she got her FBI windbreaker, some gloves, a flashlight, and a bottle of water out of her car and locked it up. They stared at the sidearm bolstered in her shoulder rig. Pierced made a big deal of writing down her name and badge number before they left, and she thanked them again. They waved as they left. She could hear

their radio cranking back up as they drove down the access road to the main gate. She stared after the dynamic duo for a moment. Like, if that’s security, the arsenal is, like, in trouble, man, she told herself.