Hunting Season (54 page)

minutes, the Sikh would be putting a garage FULL sign out in front. He unlocked the door, climbed in, and set the locks again. The rear seat folded down, so he was able to create a good-enough sleeping pad back there. The left windows of his van were right up against the outside wall, so incoming vehicles could park only on his right side. He draped a jacket up over that side’s window and stretched out. The first light of dawn was coming through the apertures between the concrete support columns, and he could see people moving around in the aTF building right next door. Their offices looked like every other government hive: computer cubes, plants in corners, conference rooms, pacifying pastel dividers, vision-impairing fluorescent lights, and all the coat-and-tie drones, moving slow until their morning caffeine fix took hold. He had spent many, many hours in similar circumstances between operational missions, and he did not miss it.

He was just closing his eyes when he caught sight of something odd in the space of daylight next to the window. It looked like a hose, a big black reinforced rubber hose, and it was just barely moving from side to side in some invisible updraft. He closed his eyes anyway, then opened them again. What the hell was a hose doing there? He stared at it again, trying to see if he had imagined movement, but it did move, as if it were dangling down from the deck above him. He sat up and looked at it again. There was something familiar about it, but he couldn’t place it. Just then a vehicle came by in front of the van, stopped, and then laboriously backed in alongside his vehicle. He lay back down instinctively, but the jacket blocked the view of the people getting out. Obviously a car pool; the men were finishing up an argument about the Washington Redskins, or Deadskins, as one of the men called them. They extracted briefcases, closed and locked the doors, and then disappeared toward the exit stairs. Kreiss sat back up again when they were clear. His eyes were stinging and he was dead tired, but there was something about that hose that bothered him.

He slid into the front seat, looked around at the nearly full parking deck, and then got out on the driver’s side. The hose came straight down from above, within easy hand reach across the low concrete wall. He reached out and touched it, surprised at how cold it was. There was a sheen of moisture on the rubber, and a shiny metal collar just out of reach had a definite rime of white frost on it. When he stretched out to look up, he saw that the hose went up one more level to the roof deck, then disappeared.

He looked down. The hose went straight down, then across a small, still, dark alley, and disappeared behind what looked like a small utility building at the back of the alley. The utility building

appeared to be connected to the aTF building. As he listened, he heard the low whistling noise of vent fans rising from the alley.

He leaned back into the garage and looked across the space between the aTF building and the garage. He could see right into a bank of offices. He watched office workers arrive in their cubes, stash lunch bags in office refrigerators, and stand around with cups of coffee, talking to their cell mates. He saw one middle-aged woman come into what was obviously an executive corner office, turn on the lights, close the door, and sit down in her chair, where she proceeded to hike up her skirt and make a major adjustment to her panty hose. None of them so much as glanced out their windows, even though it was now getting light all around. Great situational awareness, he thought. He saw no more vehicles coming up into his parking level, so he went over to the exit stairs and climbed up to the roof. Once out on the roof, he looked around and then remembered where he had seen that hose before: on the green-and-white propane truck driven by Browne McGarand, which was now parked in the corner of the roof deck.

He didn’t bother even going over there. He could see that there was no one in the truck, and he knew instinctively that whatever had been in that truck was probably now inside that office building next door. He ran back to the exit stair on the roof and started down, two steps at a time. He hadn’t really figured out what he was going to do when he got down to the street: run like hell, or warn them? And would they listen?

He was slowed by morning commuters on the stairs as he neared the ground level, and he rudely pushed past them to a chorus of “Hey, watch it” from the people he jostled. He kept saying, “Sorry, sorry,” but he also kept going. When he got outside to the street level, he stopped. The main entrance to the aTF building was a glass-walled lobby, and he could see the security people at their counter, next to X-ray machines and metal detectors. One of the men whom he had pushed by in the stairwell came abreast and gave him an angry look, but Kreiss ignored him. They were all in coats and ties; he was in slacks, a shirt, and a windbreaker. In about a minute, one of those angry aTF agents was going to ask him what he was doing out here. He looked into the alley. The hose was still there, barely distinguishable from the morning shadows. He wanted to go back there, make sure it had been routed into the ventilation building before calling a warning. But there might not be time.

He turned around to face the stream of people coming from the garage to

the building. When one of the approaching men, who looked like a mid grade bureaucrat, gave him a quizzical look, he put up his hand to stop him and then flashed Johnstone’s FBI credentials.

“Johnstone, FBI,” he announced to the startled man.

“Would you please ask one of the security guards to come out here? I think there’s a problem in that alley.”

The man looked into the alley and then back at Kreiss, and then he said, “Sure, wait here.” Kreiss stepped out of the flow of pedestrian traffic and watched through the glass as the man went inside and talked to the security people at the counter, who all looked back through the glass at Kreiss. One of them, a young black man, put on his hat and started around the counter while the guard next to him picked up a phone and began talking. Kreiss’s messenger put his briefcase on the X-ray machine’s belt and stepped through the metal detector, taking one last look at Kreiss before disappearing into the building. The security guard came through the front door and walked over to him, carrying a small radio in one hand and keeping his other hand near the butt of his gun. Kreiss made sure his hands were visible, and he held open the credentials so that the approaching guard could see the big black FBI letters. He closed it before the guard could get a close look at Johnstone’s picture, which wasn’t even a passing match for Kreiss’s face.

“Back there, in the alley. We’ve had a report of a possible bomb attack on your building. See that hose?”

The guard, who wanted another look at those credentials, locked on to the b word.

“Say what? A bomb? Where?”

“See that hose—there, all the way at the back of the alley? Look up-it’s coming down from the top deck of the parking garage. There’s a truck up there on the top deck. A propane truck. That hose looks like it’s going into your building’s ventilation system—see it?”

The guard looked, frowned, and then nodded.

“Yeah, I see it. But wait a minute. Propane? That shit stinks. We’re not smelling anything inside.”

“There’s a tanker truck on the roof of that garage that’s pumping something into your building. It might not be propane. Don’t you think you ought to check that out?”

Kreiss stood there while the bewildered guard spoke on his radio to someone inside. As he held the radio up to his ear for a reply, three more guards came running out of the lobby with guns drawn, headed straight for Kreiss. They were not smiling.

Janet held on to Lynn’s hand as Micah led them through the rising dawn up into the woods behind the cabin. The forested slopes of Pearl’s

tain rose above them like some brooding dark green mass. The rock face that overlooked Kreiss’s place was only partially visible from this angle.

Lynn was walking better than Janet had expected. Micah was following a path that led diagonally across the slope into the nearest trees, a kerosene lantern in his hand.

“Where are we going?” Janet asked.

“This here’s Pearl’s Mountain,” he replied over his shoulder.

“Limestone.

Full of caves. We got us a hidey-hole up there.”

“But if we can walk to it, so can anyone coming after us,” she protested.

“They can, but then they gotta find the right one. Harder’n it looks.”

They entered the trees, and the path diverged in three directions.

Micah stopped.

“Y’all take that left one there. Follow it ‘til it hits the bare rock. Then wait there. I’ll be along directly.”

They did as he said, arriving at a sheer rock wall fifteen minutes later.

Janet looked around for a cave entrance but found nothing. There was a broken segment of dead tree trunk propped against the rock, and they sat down on the log to rest. The climb had been steep, and Janet was a little winded. Lynn was taking deep breaths and holding her side.

Micah showed up five minutes later, dragging his jacket behind him by one of its sleeves. He put the jacket on the ground and grinned at them.

“See it?” he asked.

Janet and Lynn looked around but saw nothing that looked like a cave entrance. Janet shook her head.

“Mebbe that’s cuz y’all are sittin’ on it,” he said, pointing at the log.

They got up and Micah rolled the log sideways, revealing a narrow storm cellar door laid flat into the ground. He tugged on a rope handle, and the door opened, exposing steps cut into the dirt. Holding the lantern high, he went down into the hole. Janet let Lynn go next and then followed.

Micah told her to leave the door open.

The steps ended eight feet underground in a narrow passage of what felt like packed earth. Janet, less than thrilled to be underground, hurried to keep up with Micah’s lantern. The air in the passage was dank and still.

Kreiss folded his arms across his chest as the three guards hurried over.

One of them appeared to be older and in charge.

“You the guy claiming to be Special Agent Johnstone of the FBI?”

“That’s what he said to me, Sarge,” the man with the radio said. He had backed away from Kreiss.

The sergeant pointed his gun at Kreiss.

“We called the Bureau ops center,” he announced.

“And they said Agents Johnstone and West had been involved in a vehicle accident this morning while transporting a prisoner.

That would be you, am I right?”

Kreiss nodded but said nothing. The flow of pedestrian traffic parted visibly around the scene on the sidewalk. The sergeant had everybody go into the lobby to get this scene off the street. Once inside the lobby, he directed one of the guards to search Kreiss for weapons.

“Sarge, he says there’s some shit going down in the building. Like a bomb. Says that hose back there is pumping gas into the building.”

“What racking hose?” the sergeant demanded. The guard took him over to a window and pointed back into the alley. A second guard told Kreiss to raise ‘em while he patted him down for weapons. Kreiss obliged, trying to remain oblivious to all the stares from people going through the security checkpoint. He could hear the guard telling the sergeant about the propane truck.

The sergeant consulted by radio with the main security office upstairs.

Kreiss put his hands back down while the guard who searched him examined Johnstone’s credentials.

“Roger that,” the sergeant said into his radio. He looked at Kreiss.

“Central says there is a tanker truck up on the garage. What do you know about this?”

“I told the guard here: I think that truck is pumping an explosive gas into your building’s vent supply, via that utility building back there. In a nonzero amount of time your building here is going to vaporize when some idiot lights up a cigarette in a bathroom. Don’t you think you ought to clear the building?”

“Not on your say-so, bub; you’re the one impersonating a feeb.”

A large gray-headed man stepped out of the gathering crowd and approached the guards.

“What’s happening here, Sergeant?” he asked.

The guards all appeared to recognize the man, and people had let him through quickly. The sergeant told him what was going down, including what Kreiss had said about a possible bomb in the building.

“Not in the building,” Kreiss said.

“Your building is the bomb. I believe that truck up there is pumping some kind of explosive vapor into your vent system. While we stand here and talk.”

“Who are you?” the man asked. He spoke with the authority of someone who was used to getting immediate answers.

“My name is Edwin Kreiss, and I’m a civilian. Who are you?”

“I’m Lionel Kroner, deputy associate director. I’ve heard your name.”

“Perhaps in connection with an explosion investigation down in Ramsey, in southwest Virginia. The power plant? The hydrogen bomb?”

Kroner’s eyes widened at the mention of a hydrogen bomb. Some of the people who heard Kreiss use that term were obviously shocked, and a murmur swept the crowd.

“Yes, we sent an NRT on that,” Kroner said.

“Your name came up in a briefing. What was your involvement?”

“Nothing direct, but I know about it. And the guy who did that is probably trying to duplicate what happened down there in your building here. While we stand here and talk.”

The sergeant, who had been on the radio some more, said he had asked Central to get the lab people on the fourth floor to turn on an explosimeter to see if there was anything present in the building.

“Nobody smells anything,” he added.

“They won’t, if he’s using hydrogen,” Kreiss said.

“It’s odorless, tasteless, and completely invisible. Mr. Kroner, do you have a public-address system in this building?”

“Yes, Central does.”

“Can you get everyone to open their windows?”

Kroner blinked but then shook his head.

“We can’t,” he said.

“None of the windows in this building open.”

“Then clear the building. Now. And tell people to run like hell once they’re out of the building, because there’s going to be lots of flying glass.