The Killing Season (23 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. You need a tissue, asshole?”

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry because this is going to hurt like a son of a bitch.”

I grabbed Castle under the armpits and dragged, knowing I was stretching his wound as I pulled him across the floor, keeping low and out of line of sight of the window. He kept screaming at me to leave him until I reached the door; then he passed out.

The corridor was ablaze, the flames having advanced to within a couple of feet of us. Beyond was an inferno. I dropped Castle long enough to touch the handle of the middle door; it felt cold. I got the door open. The flames behind us lit up a large bedroom that might well have been the last area of the house untouched by fire. Directly across from us was a boarded-up French door. It had to lead out to the deck Hatcher had mentioned. I dragged Castle into the room, one leg of his suit catching fire as the flames reached us, and slammed the door shut to give us another minute or so. I kicked out the flames on Castle’s leg and made for the ­boarded-­up door. Three good tugs ripped the board loose from its screws and now the door handle was accessible. Locked, of course. I picked up a small armchair by the window in both hands and swung it. It splintered into firewood against the double-glazed door.

I heard a crackling behind me as the varnish on the bedroom door began to bubble and peel. Reaching into my shoulder holster, I drew my Beretta and fired six rounds in a wide circle as I walked back toward the glass door. Six neat holes appeared in the double glazing, but it held. I kicked the middle of the circle and both panes of glass gave way. The cold night air flooded into the room like the breath of an angel. I ran back to where Castle lay, grabbed him under the arms, and started dragging him toward the outside world.

47

12:24 a.m.

The big house on the lake was dying.

The heat on Banner’s face was uncomfortable even twenty yards distant from the house. The blaze vaporized the rain above and around it, creating a fog that drifted out from the building. God only knew how much more quickly the building would have burned without the rain. The scene reminded her of a painting of hell she’d seen years before, in the Louvre on her honeymoon. Watching the flames dance in every window, the intermittent explosions of glass and metal, it seemed difficult to believe she’d ever see Castle or Blake again. And then, of course, there was the danger outside.

Banner tore her eyes from the flames to take in the surrounding area. It wasn’t easy; the incandescence of the blaze made everything surrounding it darker. The personnel who’d been inside the house were all outside. The ones who’d made it, anyway. There hadn’t been a lot of time: The fire had begun and spread with a vicious enthusiasm. There were around forty agents forming an even semicircle around the entrance at the closest distance bearable. Banner guessed the tac teams were holding their positions around the perimeter. Not that it would do any good, because the perimeter had manifestly been breached. Banner was suddenly aware that the agents watching the blaze presented a target even easier than the crowds on Main Street earlier that day.

She unholstered her Glock and fired three quick shots in the air. That got everyone’s attention, reminded them of the other clear-and-present danger.

“People, we are in a shooting gallery right now,” she yelled. “Fall back to the trees.”

The agents surrounding the blaze snapped out of it, started moving quickly toward the greater shelter afforded by the woods. If Wardell was on this side of the building, he could pick any of them off any old time he wanted.

Where the hell is he?
The question returned with renewed intensity as Banner reached the tree line and backed up against the trunk of one of the pines, watching the blaze. Wardell had slipped through the net, flushed them all out. Was he really going to wait around and see if Hatcher appeared before he made any kind of move? It was starting to look that way. But where would he be? How could he be sure of being in a position to see Hatcher? She scanned the faces of the agents around her, hoping Blake or Castle might be among them, that they’d found another way out, but to no avail. Not everybody had retreated as far as the trees. The mobile command center was still parked on the gravel driveway, thirty yards from the house’s front entrance. She could see a couple of men silhouetted in the vehicle’s cab; another had scaled the side and was crouched on the roof, probably doing the same thing she was: looking for a sign of life.

Something about that thought brought Banner up short. She pushed off the tree, at first walking briskly, then jogging, and then flat-out running toward the command center. She opened her mouth to address the man on the roof, and then she saw the muzzle flash as he fired into a room on the second floor.

“Son of a
bitch
,” she said to herself. Then “Drop your weapon” loud, as she leveled her own piece. The gunman didn’t miss a beat, didn’t even swing the rifle around to point it at her, the way she’d been half expecting. Instead, his left hand dropped from the barrel of the rifle, brushed his side, and came back up with a pistol. It looked impossibly instinctive, like breathing in and out.

Banner saw more muzzle flash even as she felt her own gun kick. She felt the slipstream as a bullet passed within an inch of the side of her face. She ducked and kept firing. There was a grunt of pain and the figure dropped to the roof and slid off on the opposite side. Banner kept the gun level, watching both ends of the command center as she moved toward it. They had him now; no way he could outrun—

That was when the second fire broke out. This one was in the cab, where she could still see the two agents. She ran for the door, gun still in her right hand, and tugged at the handle. It was locked. Two agents caught up with her and wasted another second trying the handle again.

“It’s locked. Wardell’s on the other side. Go!” she yelled, directing one of the agents. He looked confused, but only for a second, then moved away from the burning cab. Banner could see the two men inside writhing as the flames leapt around them. She could smell burning flesh and hair. The other agent punched through the side window, bare-fisted. The flames lit up his face, showing an expression of panic. He reached in and got the door open. Burning gasoline ran out over the sill like lava. Banner and the other agent leapt back. The man in the driver’s seat toppled out as the heat contracted the muscles in his body again, shifting his ­position. The burning body landed faceup on the grass. There was a dark entrance wound in the center of his forehead. Banner felt something almost like relief for the dead man.

All of a sudden, other people were swarming around. Somebody had a foam fire extinguisher and sprayed the flames out.

“What the hell?”

“What happened?”

“How’d it . . . ?”

“Something from the house?”

“You okay?”

Banner felt anger, wanted to yell,
What took you so fucking long?
at the others, even though she knew that only a few seconds had passed since she’d first noticed the man on the roof of the command center.

The agent she’d sent after Wardell reappeared from around the side of the command unit, shaking his head.

“Anything?” Banner asked.

“Yeah,” the agent said, beckoning. “Come see this.”

Banner moved around to the other side of the command center, a few of the other men breaking off to follow her. The first agent was there, pointing up at something on the side.

“Looks like you winged him.” He was pointing at a smear of blood down the blue and gray paint of the big vehicle. Banner looked at the smear, then the ground below it. There were no obvious pools of blood on the grass, which meant Wardell might not be wounded too badly. A pity, but it was something. From here, it was a mere twenty feet to the trees.

“Go,” Banner said, but she didn’t have to. The men who’d followed her around were already running for the woods. A couple of them had flashlights.

“Medic! Need a medic over here!”

Banner turned around to tell whoever was yelling that the two men were way beyond medical help. Then she realized the shout had rung out from farther away, closer to the house. One of the agents was crouched next to a body lying less than ten yards from the burning house. She ran toward them, holding up an arm to block the intense heat from her face. She reached them and looked down at the man on the ground. It was Castle, and he was in a bad way. The shirt under his vest was so soaked with blood that it was impossible to tell how many wounds there were. Banner loosened the straps on the vest and ripped the shirt open. Looked like a gunshot, definitely. She shucked her own jacket off and bunched it up, used it to put pressure on the wound. Castle winced and his eyes flickered open.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Banner said. “Just hang on, Castle. Hang on, you stubborn bastard.”

She thought she saw the ghost of a smile on his lips. It gave her hope. She kept talking. “Where’s Blake?”

With painful effort, Castle raised his left hand a little at the wrist and three fingers and a thumb dropped down a little. It took Banner a second to realize he was trying to point.

He was pointing in the direction in which Caleb Wardell had fled.

48

12:36 a.m.

The chilled, rain-damp night air sucked in and out of my lungs as I ran between the trees. After the burning house, it was beautiful. The rain was still falling fast and hard, but the woods afforded some shelter from the deluge. Wardell was up ahead of me. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him as he crashed through the undergrowth. Brilliant white light sliced through the tree cover and swept in front on me in a wide beam, and I realized Banner or somebody else had called in the helicopters. That was good and bad: good because it meant somebody besides me had seen Wardell escape into the woods, bad because I wasn’t betting on them being able to distinguish between the two armed men running in the same direction.

About thirty feet ahead I saw the shape of a man leap an obstruction and then seemingly vanish into the earth, suggesting the ground dropped away beyond. The undergrowth was thick and the going slow; it took me longer than I’d have liked to reach the obstruction—it was the thick trunk of a fallen tree, and sure enough, there was a forty-five-­degree incline beyond it. I braced myself on the trunk and felt something tacky in the wetness. Blood. I raised my fingers to my face to try to confirm it, and that’s when I heard the click of a handgun being cocked.

“Drop it.”

The
FBI
agent who’d spoken was six feet from my face, the muzzle of his Glock 23 a good deal closer.

“I’m with the—” I began.

“I said drop it, asshole.”

I did as I was told, opening my fingers and letting the Beretta drop to the forest floor. I looked at the agent. I didn’t recognize him. Maybe that didn’t mean much. At night, in a dark blue
FBI
-branded raincoat and matching baseball cap, everyone looks pretty much identical: man or woman, black or white. But it also meant I couldn’t rule him out as being with the thin man.

“I’m with the task force,” I said.

“Hands on your head, asshole.”

I complied. “You know, my name isn’t actually ass—”

“Shut up.”

“The man you want is down there. He’s getting away.” The agent opened his mouth, no doubt to either tell me to shut up again or call me an asshole again, or possibly both, so I cut him off. “Call it in, Agent. Talk to Banner. My name’s Blake, I’m a civilian adviser. I’m on your side.”

The agent’s eyes narrowed and he tightened his grip on his Glock. Then, carefully, he took his left hand off the gun, reached for his cell phone, and hit a couple of buttons without averting his gaze one millimeter from me.

“It’s Riley. I got somebody. No, it’s not the target. Get me Agent Castle.”

That made my mind up. By the time the guy at the other end of the call went looking for Castle, discovered he was out of the action, found Banner, and she managed to convinced him I wasn’t the enemy, Wardell would be in the next state.

A lot of people think a gun will go off if the guy holding it flinches. That’s not true, not with modern firearms. The standard
FBI
-issue Glock 23 for example, like the one that was pointed at my head, has three separate safety mechan­isms to prevent accidental discharge: an external integrated trigger safety, a firing pin safety, and a drop safety. A lot of safety, in other words.

That means it takes conscious thought to squeeze the trigger, not to mention resolve. All in all, there’s a lot less effort involved in knocking somebody’s gun aside, especially when you’re dealing with a law-enforcement practitioner who’s been trained up to the eyeballs to make sure there’s a clear threat before firing. The most important thing is not to telegraph the action. So I didn’t. I just kept eye contact with the agent, kept breathing regularly, then opened my mouth as though I were going to say something else.

Then I just reached out and punched his wrist out of the way. Before he could readjust, I grabbed the gun with both hands and twisted it down. I felt the bone in his finger snap on the trigger guard. As he opened his mouth to cry out in pain, I yanked the gun out of his hand and slammed my right elbow into his nose. The guy went down as emphatically as the
Titanic
, and a whole lot quicker. I tossed the gun deep into the pines, retrieved my own from the ground, then put my left hand onto the fallen tree and vaulted over and onto the incline.

I scrabbled down the slope, trying to balance speed with some regard for safety. It wasn’t easy in the dark; the pines dotting the slope blotted out the sky as effectively as a blackout blind, and I realized why they were called the Black Hills. I could barely make out the ground, never mind what was ahead of me. The incline suddenly became more pronounced, and any control over my speed of descent evaporated. All of a sudden I was running full tilt. And then the inevitable happened: My foot landed on a loose rock, which gave way and sent me tumbling face-first. I brought my arms up around my head as I hit the ground and kept falling. I grabbed around for purchase on a root, a bush, some grass . . . anything to slow my fall. My right side impacted off something large and unyielding—had to be a tree. It knocked the wind out of me but absorbed some of my momentum. The fingers of my right hand brushed against the leaves of a bush, and I closed my fist around a handful of it. The handful ripped away, but I was moving slower again. I was able to roll onto my back and use my heels and my palms to brake. I caught my breath and looked down.