Hunting Season (68 page)

Janet pulled the car into the exit lane for the arsenal. The barrels were still there, but they were no longer blocking the ramp. She drove slowly and quietly up the road toward the main gate, stopping just down the hill from the gate itself so as to minimize their engine noise. She parked to the side and shut it down. She rolled down her window and listened. She had been having second thoughts about this little caper ever since leaving downtown Blacksburg, but, given Lynn’s enthusiasm, she couldn’t think of a way to back out. When Farnsworth found out, she’d probably be a civilian again. Lynn had Janet’s .38 in her lap and was rotating the cylinder, click by click.

“So,” Janet said.

“This seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I’m not so sure.”

“I say we drive in there, lights and horn going,” Lynn replied.

“Go in there and make a shitload of noise until Dad pops out of the bushes and yells at us. Then grab him.”

“Might not be that simple,” Janet said.

“If they were going to go after each other, that will be a free fire zone down there. Open season. We go down there, we might get ourselves killed. You heard that rifle this afternoon.

Plus, if you show up, you’ll distract your father. Maybe get him killed.”

“If you’re thinking of leaving me out here,” Lynn said, “you can just forget that shit.”

“I’m thinking we shouldn’t go in there at all,” Janet said, conscious now of the open window and how their voices might be carrying. She scanned the chain-link fences ahead of them.

“Hell, it may be all over by now. But either way, we know nothing about the tactical situation. I’m saying we probably can’t help, and we might even screw things up.”

“Then let’s call the police. The local cops, I mean. Make some hysterical phone call to nine one one; two women in trouble at the Ramsey Arsenal.

Rape. Murder. Frenzied bikers. Bring a mob of cops out here and they’d have to stop it.”

Janet was shaking her head. Coming out here had been a dumb idea.

“They might stop it tonight, but then it would just go on. That woman and your father would melt away into the woods. I think after all that’s happened—in that cave, and with the big explosion we had here—this has become personal now. The matter in Washington is being solved as we speak. I’m just afraid if we go in there now, we might do more harm than good.”

“I think you’re just plain afraid,” Lynn said, turning away from Janet and staring through the darkened windshield.

Janet held her tongue. Of course she was afraid. Anyone who wasn’t afraid of both those people down there would be an idiot. But the more she thought about it, the more she knew she was right. Of course Lynn was burning up with worry about her father, but that didn’t solve the practical problem: They couldn’t just drive down there. What would they do once they got inside? Offer mediation services? Counseling? She could just see herself climbing around the wreckage of the industrial area, calling for them to come out and talk things over. And

if they called the local cops, they’d get one deputy sheriff. Whoopee. What they really needed here was an army of feds. No onesies and twosies, but ten Suburbans with federal SWAT troops, helicopters, dogs, tanks-Tanks.

She picked up the car phone.

“Now what the hell are you doing?” Lynn asked.

“Getting some reinforcements,” Janet said. She pulled her phone book out of her purse and looked up a number, then dialed it. The phone rang three times. She swore when she thought it was going to voice mail, but a man’s voice finally answered.

“Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Special Agent Rogers speaking.”

“This is Special Agent Janet Carter of the Roanoke office, FBI. I’ve got the gomer who blew up your Washington headquarters building cornered in the Ramsey Army Arsenal. I need some backup down here, and I need it right fucking now! My duty officer isn’t picking up. You people interested?”

Kreiss reached the arched top of the ladder and, moving with excruciating care, stepped over the top rung and down—onto nothing at all. He felt himself falling and just barely managed to catch himself on the curved ladder edges. He deliberately let his hands slide down the rusty metal railings right to the mounting brackets in order to soften the noise he was making. It took all his strength just to hang there. He felt the cool night air between his legs and realized that the building’s roof must have collapsed when the power plant blew up. What he had thought was a solid building was nothing more than just a side wall, with the rest of the building blown completely away. He couldn’t see what was below him, but he was at least forty feet up in the air. He was entirely exposed, dangling in plain sight over the debris field below. If she happened to lift the scanner, she’d probably start laughing. He heard the metal in the railing creaking.

But then the sound program saved him.

Back in the valve pit, the tape switched on. A tiny sound of a screwdriver tapping once, very gently against a steel pipe, clinked out into the night. Kreiss heard it, and he hoped like hell Misty heard it too. He tried a two-handed chin-up to pull himself back onto the ladder, but his feet did not connect with anything but air. He couldn’t really use his feet without making scuffing noises against the concrete wall. Gripping tightly with his right hand, he shifted his left hand over to the right railing, lifted his left knee, and this

time was able to use his knee to lever his upper body onto the parapet at the top, then over to the top outside rung of the ladder.

He nearly lost the mirrored glasses off his face in the process. Bits of old concrete dust fell away into the rubble below, sounding to Kreiss like an avalanche.

Then came the sound of a metal buckle hitting the stock of a rifle, a muffled but distinct sound clear enough that he could classify it immediately.

It sounded as if it was coming from in front of the valve pit, but he couldn’t be sure, not way up here, dangling on the side of a building. He had to get down now, because there was nowhere else to go. If she saw him, she’d just blast him off the ladder like a fly off a window. Then the hair went up on the back of his neck.

She was here, or at least very near. Down there in the dark.

He froze on the ladder, willing himself to become invisible. With one finger, he pulled the glasses down his nose and peered down into the side street below. It was pitch-black, darker than dark, but he sensed there was something down there. Something moving.

The side street pointed directly at the valve pit, which was about twenty-five yards away. The sound program was set to make a noise every three minutes. He waited, dangling on the ladder, afraid even to breathe.

Then from the valve pit came the sound of a human sniffing, one little noise, as if a man was clearing his nose while he waited for something. He pushed the glasses back up on his nose. Soon now.

A gust of wind came down the street, and he could feel it along the full length of his body. It was almost strong enough to ruffle his clothes. Was she down there right now, pressed against a building, this building, in the kneeling position, holding the assault rifle and sweeping the IR sight back and forth across the sector from which the tiny noises were coming? Seeing the barely visible fuzzy patch of green in the scope where the warm piece of metal, cooling fast now, would show up against all that cold concrete?

Gripping the railing as hard as he could with his left hand, he drew the .45 across his chest and pointed it down into the black void beneath his feet. Virtually blind behind the glasses, he put his thumb on the hammer and then squeezed all thought and sensation out of his forebrain and focused every bit of his energy into listening.

The next sound came a minute later. This time, it was a barely audible squeak, like the sound a plastic egg carton makes when a human hand pushes down on it. Then something definitely moved down below him, not a whole body in motion, but something less, a human effort, the sound of cloth straining for just a second, and then a brilliant purple flash

ignited over the valve pit. The glasses protected him from the full effect, but the soundless, dazzling blaze of light still almost blinded him. He caught a glimpse of a black figure bolting down the street, straight at the valve pit, and then there was a second purple explosion, followed by the thump of a thermite grenade erupting down in the pit, the explosion flaring into a brilliant white bolus of sparks and flame. Then the AK-47 opened up in a roar, blasting rounds directly down into the pit, sending red-and-yellow ricochets off into the night, the sound of the automatic weapon rebounding off the nearby concrete structures. The rifle hammered away on full auto until the magazine was empty. Misty with a gun, Kreiss marveled as he thumbed back the hammer, I’ll be goddamned.

He flipped the glasses off his nose as the thermite fire hit its peak, throwing every feature of the wrecked buildings into searing black-and white relief. He finally saw Misty silhouetted against the opposite wall, and he didn’t hesitate. He twisted his body in midair, took a snap aim at the silhouetted figure, and emptied the .45, the big gun banging painfully back into his wrist with each round. Just as he realized that all the bullets had done nothing more than blast chunks of concrete off the opposite wall, a voice below him said, “Nice shooting, Edwin, but you just killed an illusion. Now come down from there.”

Janet saw the familiar purple flare over the hill behind the main gates and instinctively closed her eyes, missing the second one. Then she heard Lynn gasp as an unearthly white glow lit up the trees in front of them, accompanied by the stuttering roar of an assault rifle. They looked at each other for an instant, and then she started the car, slammed it into gear, and punched it up the road, through the police barrier tapes, and right through the chain-link gate at the top of the drive. Accelerating too fast, she nearly lost it on the first curve. They topped the hill leading down into the industrial area, going fast enough to lift the car off its shocks and then bang it down on the concrete. She started braking when she saw the searing glare of burning phosphorus in the valve pit and heard the thumping reports as the .45 let go. The boiling thermite fire turned the wreckage of the arsenal into a vision of hell, throwing grotesque demon like shadows onto the stark concrete shells of the buildings. She felt the car lose traction on all the loose gravel and concrete bits in the street, the tires scattering debris like shrapnel. She instinctively braked hard, too hard, whipping it around in a 360-degree spin, and then the next thing she saw was that big black hole that led down into the Ditch right in front

of them. She started to scream, but then the car hit the pile of pipes, steel straws clattering along the sides of the car, and then it plunged through them and into the hole, slamming both of them into the windshield. Her last thought before she lost consciousness was that she really should have put on her seat belt.

Kreiss dropped the empty .45 down into the street and came down the ladder. Misty stood there in full field gear, with an IR goggle headset pushed back up over her hood. She held what looked like a miniature camcorder in her left hand and a Colt Woodsman .22 semiautomatic pistol in her right hand. As he reached the street and dropped onto all fours in the gravel, he saw that the camcorder was really a video projector. A green-lighted human silhouette was bouncing around the adjacent walls as Misty walked over to him.

“Put out your hands,” she ordered.

“Let’s just get it done, why don’t we?” he said.

“Get what done? I’m not going to shoot you. This is a retrieval mission.

Put out your hands. Fingers joined together.”

He crouched there for a second, considering his options. Her expression confirmed what he already knew: He didn’t have any options. He put out his hands. She dropped the projector and brought out a small cylinder, from which she sprayed capture curtain all over his joined hands. It felt cold and then warm. His hands disappeared into a glob of latex.

They both heard the car coming at the same time. Kreiss turned to look, hoping she would look also, but Misty never moved as she kept that Woodsman pointed at his face. The car sounded as if it were out of control coming down the main street, which was now out of sight behind Misty. They heard the brakes squeal and then the sound of tortured tires losing traction. The car hit something solid. The engine raced for a moment before stalling out. Then silence.

“Your cavalry?” she asked.

He shook his head. He desperately needed to distract her. His hands were glob bed up, but he still had his feet. As if she sensed his intentions, she moved back a step. There was an ominous silence behind the building where the car had hit something.

“Well, it’s not mine, either,” she said.

“So let’s go see. Sounds to me like they fucked it up. You first.”

He complied, holding his hands out in front of him to keep his arms free. He didn’t want the sticky stuff enveloping his hands to touch

any other part of his body. He could see from the shadows thrown by the subsiding fire that Misty was behind him, but he could not determine how far back she was. It smelled as if some wooden boards were burning back in the valve pit. The wood smoke was a pleasant contrast to the poisonous stink of burned phosphorus. He kept looking for an opening, but Misty wasn’t likely to give him one.

They came around the shattered front wall of the building and saw the car. It looked to Kreiss like a Bu car, with those two whip antennas on the trunk. It was nosed down into that same big hole Carter had driven into before. Carter? Could Carter have come back here? And then he had a really bad thought: Had she brought Lynn with her? No, she wouldn’t have been that dumb.

They approached the car carefully. He had the sense that Misty was even farther behind him. Maybe he could jump past the car down into the Ditch. But then he remembered how far down it was; he’d break both his legs.

“Stop there,” she ordered. He complied.

“Get down on your knees.”

He didn’t move. There was nothing moving in the car, which he could see now was held in place by a lone steel pipe bent under its frame. The nose of the car was below street level, kept from falling all the way through into the Ditch by the pipe that was jammed up under its left front wheel well. No one was visible inside.