The Killing Season (22 page)

Added to the rifle were tools for a variety of jobs. For close-range encounters, he’d stowed the AK in favor of a
SIG
Sauer P226, chambered for nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds, which was holstered at his hip. If things got even closer, he had a stag-handled bowie knife strapped to his boot. He was dressed in woodland combat
BDU
s with a multitude of pockets containing all kinds of useful things, like a compass and utility knife and what they’d referred to in the Corps as a blowout kit: a first aid pack specifically for treating gunshot wounds. In a green waterproof drag bag, he had four decently assembled pipe bombs. He’d inspected all of this equipment earlier, of course, and had concluded with some surprise that Nolan had actually done a pretty good Boy Scout job.

Wardell put his eye to the scope of the Remington again and tracked the closest tac team, weighing up his two options. He’d probably be able to get past them, but it wasn’t a dead cert. If they saw him, he’d be a rat in a trap. But even so, he liked it better than the other option, which was to pick off every member of the closest five-man team before the alarm could be raised. He wasn’t worried about the shooting, because he knew he could take all five out in three and a half seconds, but there was the rub. Three and a half seconds was a hell of a long time for trained men expecting just this sort of attack. No way he’d get all of them before somebody yelled or returned fire. Once that happened, he’d be faced with two more options: fall back and hope he’d get another chance later, or hold his position and engage the incoming backup teams. Sooner or later they’d pin him down, and that would be that. And Wardell wasn’t quite ready for that to be that.

He looked at his watch, saw it was nearly midnight. It looked like he’d have to go with the stealthy approach.

But then providence lent a hand. The leader of the nearest tac team put a hand to his right ear. The body language was crystal clear: Somebody at the command center was giving him an instruction. What followed made the content of the instruction just as clear. For some reason, the tac team closest to Wardell, the one he was most worried about, had been ordered to move out of position.

Scarcely able to believe his luck, Wardell watched as the five-man team moved quietly northeast. He reached for the drag bag, flattened himself to the ground, and began to low crawl down the incline.

DAY FIVE

45

12:02 a.m.

We passed through so many rooms and corridors that I began to wonder if I should have left a trail of bread crumbs. Eventually we emerged into a tall, wide entrance foyer. The polished hardwood floor was covered in the center by a gigantic Oriental rug. Several doors on each wall led back off into the interior of the house, and a big wooden spiral staircase in the center of the room accessed a mezzanine level, on which I could see more doors and corridors leading off at each side. The place had looked big from the outside, but from within it seemed positively cavernous.

Two agents, evidently chosen for their powerful builds, guarded the door leading to the basement level, where Hatcher was hiding out in a games room.

As Castle led us down into the bowels of the building, I was struck by the contrast with the rest of the house. Although the basement space was well appointed with a pool table, big-screen
TV
, and even a small bar, the decor seemed deliberately unfinished. The walls were bare concrete, and the struts and beams supporting the house above were left visible. As a bunker, it was actually pretty effective, nestled in foundations of three-foot-thick poured concrete. And it was windowless.

Hatcher was a big man, and I immediately sensed that he was someone used to getting his own way. He was working the pool table all by himself, knocking the striped balls into the pockets with increasing ferocity.

“I thought you guys were moving me,” he said again. Castle had told me this was something of an about-face from his earlier requests.

Banner said, “Given the weather conditions and the events in Rapid City earlier, we felt it would—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hatcher said, cutting her off mid­sentence and holding a hand up as if to ward off further words. “Why don’t you—”

“Wardell’s out there right now,” I cut in. “He’s out in those woods and he’s ready to put a bullet in you. Any ­vehicle leaves this place, he’s going to know exactly who’s in it.”

Hatcher snorted and put the cue down on the edge of the table.

“And, in point of fact, you probably wouldn’t make it to the vehicle,” I continued. “Likely as not, he could drop you as soon as you stuck your head out of the door.”

“You know how to put a guy at ease, Agent.”

I ignored the assumption. “I don’t want you at ease, Hatcher. People at ease take things for granted. They don’t look over their shoulder when they walk down the street.”

He walked over to a couch pushed up against one of the walls, then changed his mind and paced the other way, scratching behind his ear angrily.

“I gotta get out of here,” he said suddenly, turning and heading for the stairs.

Castle put a hand on his left shoulder. “You’re staying here.”

Hatcher tried to shrug the hand off, then pushed Castle back when that didn’t work. “Get the fuck off of me.”

A scuffle broke out, Castle trying to restrain Hatcher as the other man tried to connect with a couple of wild swings. I moved to intervene as one of Hatcher’s swipes connected with Castle’s nose and he yelled in pain. I didn’t expend too much effort, just put a couple of smooth, practiced moves into action, and all of a sudden I had Hatcher pinned against the rough concrete wall with his right arm twisted up between his shoulder blades. Hatcher had fifty pounds on me, but he was the one who was doing the yelping.

“Do what we tell you,” I said, speaking slowly and deliber­ately, “or you’re dead.” It sounded more like a direct threat when I said it, but I figured that wouldn’t necessarily hurt.

Banner approached from the side. “I don’t want you dead, Mr. Hatcher. It looks shitty on the report.” She glanced at Castle, who was holding his bloody nose between thumb and index finger. “You okay?”

Castle nodded. “I hope that fucking hurts.”

“Okay, okay, just let me go,” Hatcher said.

I held him another few seconds and let him yell again before, warily, I relaxed my grip.

Hatcher stumbled over to the couch and slumped down on it. Then he did the last thing any of us expected. He put his head in his hands and started to cry. There was an uncomfortable silence, broken only by Hatcher’s muffled sobs.

“Why me?” he said, then raised his head to look up at Castle, who was still tending his nose. “Why me?”

Castle glanced up at the ceiling, above which the million-­dollar house sat. Nobody spoke. Outside, the sound of the rain hitting the ground seemed to get louder, as though the elements were stepping up their assault. Then there was a dull sound like something heavy being dropped, and all of us looked up.

“What was that?” Banner asked.

“Nothing good,” I replied.

A minute later, the door at the top of the stairs was flung open.

“We’ve got to clear the building,” yelled one of the big agents from the top of the stairs.

“What the hell is going on?” Banner demanded.

“Fire.”

They weren’t kidding. You could smell the smoke halfway up the stairs. “What happened?” I said, addressing the agent who’d opened the door as we ascended.

“North side of the building’s on fire. We need to get the hell out of here ASAP.” He held the door as we emerged into the entrance hall, which was already filling with smoke. As I watched, part of the ceiling at the far side of the room gave way, a shower of flaming debris raining down from above.

I grabbed his arm. “What the hell
happened
?”

“Looks like a fire broke out in the shed containing the gas cylinders. Agent Wetherspoon’s out there. He says it went up like the Fourth of July. We have to clear the building, sir.”

“That’s just what he wants. That’s why he started the goddamn fire,” I said.

“We secured that shed, right?” Banner said, addressing Castle.

“We had two guys right outside, orders not to move no matter what.”

“They’re dead,” the agent at the door said abruptly.

“What?”

“Park and Cole,” he elaborated. “Wetherspoon says they’re both down.”

“That’s impossible,” Castle said. “That’s inside the ring. If he’d gotten that far, we’d know about it. He’d have engaged one of the teams.”

“Looks like he got past them,” I replied.

“Sir, we need to—” the agent started, trying to herd us toward the front door.

Castle ignored him. “Something’s wrong. This is all wrong.”

He was right. A hundred and fifty armed men protecting the building, and Wardell had managed to get close enough to give himself his only realistic chance of acquiring the target, by smoking us out. There was something more at work here. But we would have to worry about that later.

At that moment we had two pressing concerns: to get out of the building before it burned down around us, and to make sure Hatcher didn’t leave by the main door. I opened my mouth to say as much, just as a door at the other end of the hall exploded off its hinges, a dragon’s breath of fire billowing into the corridor in its wake. Beyond the doorframe was an inferno. The entire north side of the house was ablaze, and it was spreading fast.

The agent who’d led us out of the basement was at the main door, yelling for us to follow.

“Hatcher,” I yelled. “Are there any other exits?” Wardell had played an expert hand, but there was still only one of him. He’d be forced to play the odds and cover the main door. Hatcher had a glazed look on his face, as though the fire on top of everything else had caused a sensory shutdown.

Castle looked at the main exit, saw what I meant. He grabbed Hatcher’s shirt lapels and pushed him back, slamming him against the wall.

“Hatcher! Another way out?”

Slowly, he got the words out. “Master bedroom. Stairs down from the deck.” He started toward the big spiral staircase.

Just then, one of the exposed ceiling joists collapsed directly above us with a shrieking, bansheelike noise. I wrapped my arms around Banner’s waist and dived for the floor, just scraping under the falling beam. Flaming debris showered down after it like confetti. A spark ignited the sleeve of my shirt and I managed to pat it out with Banner’s help, but not before sustaining a long burn on my right forearm.

“You okay?” she asked.

I nodded, wincing. “Good thing I’m allergic to polyester,” I said, turning to look at the long bonfire that now divided the wide entrance hall. I looked down the length of the beam and saw that the bulky agent was lying dead under it, his skull crushed by the beam.

Castle and Hatcher were on the other side of the flaming beam, both unharmed. The collapse seemed to have snapped Hatcher out of his daze, and he was looking around for an exit. The beam had landed roughly diagonally across the space. Banner and I could reach the front entrance, but not the spiral staircase that led to the mezzanine. Castle and Hatcher were faced with the opposite situation.

Castle pointed at the door. “You go. I’ll get him out by the bedroom.”

I grabbed Banner by the arm. Front entrance it was, then. Especially since the only other option was going back down to the basement and slow-roasting. I only hoped Wardell wasn’t feeling like a consolation prize, because we were about to present ourselves as candidates. As we headed for the door, I glanced up and saw Castle and Hatcher reach the second-floor mezzanine that overlooked the hall. A lone agent appeared from the south corridor, beckoning for them to follow. I turned away and then did a double take. The agent was thin and was wearing glasses. Even through the smoke and the heat haze, there was something familiar about him. Then it clicked. It was the man I’d seen in the crowd in Fort Dodge.

I yelled out Castle’s name, but the sound was lost in the roar of the flames as the three men disappeared along the second-floor landing.

“Come on,” Banner yelled, tugging at my arm.

“You go,” I said, unstrapping my Kevlar vest and handing it to her. “Hold it up like a shield and run like hell for cover.”

“What about you?”

I didn’t answer. Castle and Hatcher were in trouble, and being trapped in a burning building was the goddamned least of it.

46

12:19 a.m.

I lingered long enough to see Banner bolt through the front door, then waited a couple of seconds. There were no shots, none that I could hear. Encouraged, I turned back to attempt to get past the bonfire, quickly realizing there wasn’t a way. The flames had spread rapidly, and the big Oriental rug, together with much of the wooden hall floor, was ablaze. I’d have to circumvent it. There was a big antique cabinet below the mezzanine level, only inches away from the flames spreading from the doorway at the far end.

I took a breath and ran for it, pushing off my right foot, landing atop the cabinet with my left, and then slingshotting myself upward. The mezzanine was a good twelve feet off the ground, so I barely made it. My left hand found the polished wood floor and slipped off, but my right hand caught the bottom of one of the banisters and found purchase. I hauled myself up and over.

The mezzanine was empty—smoke seeping from beneath the doors on the north side. I touched the back of my hand to one of the brass door handles and instantly pulled it away. It was like touching a griddle. The whole place was a time bomb waiting to explode. I ran in the direction Castle and the others had gone, rounded a corner, and saw Castle lying prone on the wood floor.

I rolled him over onto his back to check for a pulse, but he saved me the trouble by groaning and opening his eyes. He touched a hand to the back of his head and winced. “Blake. What . . . ?”

I started to ask which way they’d gone, then remembered there was only one direction possible—straight ahead. There were three doors at the far end of the hall: one on the left, one in the middle, one on the right. The one on the left was closed and faced north, so it would be a backdraft death trap. The one on the right was open.

I hauled Castle to his feet and we made for the door. Behind us, I heard a
whump
as one of the landing doors exploded outward. I was first through the open doorway and instinctively raised my arm up to cover my eyes from the blinding light flooding the room. Someone had removed the plywood from the big plate-glass window, and a searchlight from one of the choppers lit up the room like Las Vegas. I blinked the flash out of my eyes as the helicopter’s beam angled away and was able to make out two blurred figures by the window.

“Hatcher, get down!” I yelled, not sure which of the ­figures was him.

Just then I felt Castle’s shoulder slam into me and knock me off my feet. I heard three shots from a pistol and a yell of pain and anger. As I blinked the last of the stars out of my eyes, I saw Castle charge at the thin gunman and football-tackle him to the ground. Hatcher was standing by the window, watching the two men on the floor. I suddenly realized that this room faced the front of the building. There was no deck out there, which meant it wasn’t the master bedroom. The thin man had brought Hatcher in here for the very reason I had avoided bringing him out the front entrance.

“Get—” Before I could finish, part of Hatcher’s head seemed to vanish, and there was a puff of vapor that was bright red in the concentrated light. His legs buckled and he dropped to the floor.

I scrambled to my feet and ducked as I heard another shot, realizing quickly that this one had come from within the room. The two men on the floor had stopped moving. The thin man was on top of Castle, slumped and unmoving. They looked like a couple who had just finished lovemaking. I pulled the thin man off, knowing he was dead from the bloody stain over his heart. Castle was still breathing, but it didn’t look like he would be for much longer. The vest had stopped one of the rounds, but another had hit between the top of the vest and his throat.

He blinked and coughed blood when he saw me. He said, “Hatcher?” having difficulty getting the word out.

I looked at Hatcher’s body, looked back and shook my head.

“Get the hell out of here, Blake,” he said, closing his eyes.

I ignored him, busying myself with reaching inside the thin man’s jacket. My fingers closed around a leather
ID
case. There was no time to examine it, so I slid it into my pocket. I looked up at the window with its single neat bullet hole. I heard more shots from outside, but not from a rifle. A pistol this time, maybe more than one. I looked back at the hallway. The shadows of flames danced along the wall. The middle door had to be the master bedroom, the one Hatcher had talked about.