The Program (57 page)

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's just get Leah."

Trailing her black robes, Judge Seitel turned the corner. She raised a wary eyebrow at Winston as he scrambled to present her the affidavits.

"Let's hope you brought me something I can put my name on this time around, gentlemen. Even an old girl wants to say yes now and again."

Chapter
fifty-two

The marshal screeched over on the side of Little Tujunga near the dirt road that twisted up the hills to the ranch. Tim leapt out before the Bronco stopped. Two Expeditions, a rusty Pathfinder, Freed's Porsche, Bear's Ram, and six black-and-whites from the La Crescenta Sheriff's Station crammed the dirt turnoff. More vehicles stretched up the roadside, including the Service's armored personnel carrier, a military peace-keeper they'd dubbed the Pacemaker for all its hours in the shop. Painted black right down to the bulletproof turret, the APC looked like a Humvee on steroids. Tim had requested it over the Beast in case the flooded creek a mile up the road still proved treacherous.

Miller stood with one foot on the running board of the APC, the deputies and geared-up ART members circled around him. Chomper poked at Bear with his snout until he lowered a hand to scratch behind his ears.

Denley was emerging from his wife's teal Saturn and taking a good ribbing for it.

Tim ran over, warrants triumphantly raised over his head, flapping in the wind. Miller snatched them from his hand, squinting to read them in the dusk.

The station captain, a box-headed ex-Marine who went by Duke, glanced over Miller's shoulder. "What's the fire? We could've served these tomorrow."

"Leah Henning moled out the evidence for the warrants." Tim held up Leah's graduation photo, the one from Will's wallet, and the men handed it around the circle. "She got caught."

Duke took note of his expression, snapped his chin down in a nod. "Right."

"You see this girl, you bring her to me. Got it?"

Bear tossed Tim a vest, and he zipped it over his T-shirt as he introduced himself to the sheriff's deputies. Owen B. Rutherford nodded at him severely from the back. Though Tim had alerted him largely as a courtesy and he'd have to wait back at the staging point with Dray and Tannino, Rutherford was fully decked out -- raid jacket, shotgun, shoulder-slung MP5, Beretta, gold-and-blue postal inspector badge dangling from a chain around his neck. Mail defilers beware.

Tannino jogged over, Dray at his heels, then assessed the crew.

Miller glanced at his watch. "Thomas is en route."

Duke said, "The secondary is up, but we can't get airtight around the rear boundary given the terrain. We'd like to get a few more units positioned --"

"We don't have time," Tim said.

Duke looked at Miller, and Miller shrugged.

The Lincoln Navigator skidded up, and Will, Rooch, and Doug hopped out. Tannino snapped his fingers for them to stay put away from the briefing area.

Miller jerked his head at the Navigator. "Who bought the senator's boyfriend front-row tickets?"

"He did," Tannino said. "Don't worry -- I'll babysit him at the staging point."

Tim's lip tingled along the scar, an itch too deep to scratch. "Where's the dog?"

A soft-voiced deputy with a droopy mustache pointed to a leonine German shepherd gazing forlornly from the passenger window of a Volvo. "That there's Cosmo. She's L.A. Sheriff's and OES cadaver-certified."

Miller tossed the deputy a Racal portable. "Channel forty-eight. Make sure you don't break in if she alerts over a dead squirrel."

The deputy bobbed his head. His name tag announced him as Danner. "Don't you worry 'bout no dead squirrels. Cosmo's like that squinty little bastard from The Sixth Sense. She howls, there's a corpse talkin' to her."

A few of the deputies chuckled.

"How many people are up there?" Denley asked.

"Could be seventy, probably less," Tim said. "We busted up their last meeting, so I hope we knocked loose the fence-sitters."

"So what's left are hard-line zealots eager to die for Allah."

"Remember, we're just serving a warrant here. It's our job to make sure this doesn't spin up."

"Tell that to the David Koresh motherfucker," one of the deputies said.

Tannino stuck his head into the circle. "This thing goes Ruby Ridge, I will personally chew off your ass."

The deputy's grin faded.

Miller had ordered some of the deputies to carry less-lethal. Bear handed around the Remington 870s, the clear rounds showing off the stuffed beanbags inside. Maybeck shouldered the big-bore launcher and dug in the APC for pepper-spray canisters.

A county fire ambulance pulled up, red light strobing through the darkening air. Miller gestured at them, and the driver nodded, cutting the lights and idling at the curb. Law-enforcement and emergency-response vehicles crowded Little Tujunga. Drivers were starting to rubberneck.

Duke and his deputies peeled out to shore up the secondary perimeter, leaving behind four units to join the caravan of vehicles to the front gate.

Thomas jogged up the road, ballistic helmet under one arm, waving what looked like a rolled blueprint. "Sorry. I stopped off at the barn to grab the topograph for the ranch."

Miller stretched out the blueprint and squatted over it.

The ART members were heating up, checking shotgun slides, testing the portables, changing out flashlight batteries.

For a moment Tim took it all in -- the vehicles jammed along the road, Denley snugging his goggles into place, the grind of steel-plated boots into dirt, the smell of gun oil, the big-barreled shotgun breach-broken over Maybeck's arm, Guerrera tugging on thin black gloves, the splotches of dried sweat staining the tactical vests, Bear thumbing round after round into his magazine.

Tim came out of his reverie, and everyone was staring at him, stacked back three deep, curved in a fat arc around the front of the APC.

He realized that the circle had re-formed around him, that he was standing in the center.

Miller nodded at the unfurled topograph. "Your show, Rack."

Maybeck firmed two tempered steel hooks around the bars of the gate, and the APC lurched back. The cable groaned, and then the gate popped free, skidding in the mud. The abandoned guard station seemed a pretty good indication that The Program's ranks had been thinned by the unsuccessful colloquium, but Tim wasn't going to count on it.

The sheriff's deputies lined out across the gap, guarding the staging point, Dray and Tannino holding back with them. Bearing his various weapons like a downsized Rambo, Rutherford paced ravenously, pausing to flash the ART squad a flight-deck officer's thumbs-up. Waiting between Rooch and Doug far from the deputies' vanguard, Will caught Tim's eye and gave him a serious nod.

Tim and Bear were the first over the fallen gate, the others drawn behind them, stacked in two-man cells with their shoulder weapons low-ready, sweeping up the hill like a force of nature. Tim's badge bounced on his belt. His head buzzed with adrenaline. The five thrusts of cypress, the jagged ice plant like shag carpeting along the drive, the sharp tree-bark taste of the breeze -- it was all disorienting yet familiar, a place he'd visited in the hazy grasp of a dream. They pierced Cottage Circle, the full authority of the federal government blazing its way through forbidden land. The Pros on the circular lawn gaped at the rapid approach. Tim noted bodies in the windows -- he'd guessed right, catching them in their cottages before the nighttime Orae.

"U.S. Marshals, we're here to serve a search warrant," Tim shouted.

Miller forged forward, Chomper straining on his lead. Denley and Palton peeled off to run a recon loop around the treatment wing and Growth Hall. The others began knocking and moving through the buildings, two cells per cottage. The first rule of any operation -- clear and contain before progressing.

Tim and Bear took Cottage Three, Leah's last-known, Thomas and Freed covering their rear. Most of the rooms were empty. In the kitchen Lorraine was bouncing up and down, rubbing her arm as if trying to erase a stain. She looked aged beyond her years.

"Where's Leah?"

She kept scrubbing, her voice a panicked whine. "Everything's falling apart."

Tim left Bear to frisk her and headed down the hall. He let his muzzle lead as he shoved through doors. The first two rooms were empty.

In the next, Don Stanford and Julie huddled together on an unmade bed. Tim lowered the MP5 and shuffle-stepped toward them, patting them down.

Julie started to cry. "The Teacher said people were coming to kidnap us."

"We're not here to harm you."

Freed stepped in and asked them to move outside.

Heart pounding, Tim headed to the final bedroom. Aside from a few raised voices, torn away in the wind, it was quiet outside. No gunshots.

He saw two feet shadowed beneath the door gap, so he stood to the side of the jamb and shouted, "U.S. Marshals. Open up."

No response.

"Open the door now."

He pivoted and kicked, the in-swinging door striking flesh and eliciting a pained grunt. Janie spilled on her ass, gripping a swollen wrist, a kitchen knife on the rug beside her. "Asshole."

He kicked away the knife, and she scrambled for him, nails tearing against his bulletproof vest.

Slinging the MP5, he flipped her, cinched flex-cuffs around her wrists and ankles, and frisked her. Beside one of the beds, a spray of wild-flowers leaned from a cone of cardboard.

"Where is she?"

Janie tossed her head to the side, laughing. "She got hers."

Tim hauled her outside and handed her off to Haines. She was still struggling against the flex-cuffs, so he had to put her on her chest.

About thirty Pros milled around on the lawn under Miller's watchful eye, looking dazed but compliant. Even Deano, the burly bouncer who'd tangled with Tim at the Radisson, was deferential in the face of the ART squad's authority. Weapons lowered, ART members were moving the last Pros and Protectors -- save for Skate -- from the cottages to the lawn. No struggles, no flex-cuffed suspects except Janie, no white tear-gas smoke seeping from doorways.

The area was now cleared, the population safely contained. His dread growing, Tim moved among the scattered Pros, spinning a few of the girls around to peer at their faces.

Palton cut in on the primary channel to declare the treatment wing and Growth Hall empty -- that meant Leah was downslope in Skate's shed, TD's bedroom, or the woods. The thought drove Tim toward the trailhead. Bear met him at its brush-funneled entrance, Thomas and Freed falling in behind them. Guerrera, Maybeck, and Zimmer joined their wake from one side, Palton and Denley sweeping in from the other. Danner jogged to catch up, leaving slack in Cosmo's lead, and Roger Frisk from ESU brought up the rear.

Elephant grass and chaparral crowded them at the shoulders. Tim tapped his belt to reacquaint himself with his can of pepper spray; they were entering Doberman country. The wind whipped upslope, carrying the reverberating wail of an opera singer.

They broke into the clearing, which sat still and peaceful, bathed in an orchestral swell from TD's stereo. Save the smoke splitting the rain cap of the shed's chimney like languid steam, there were no signs of life. Denley started his preentry hum.

"Seek, girl, seek." Danner unsnapped Cosmo's lead, and the German shepherd bounded off into the woods. Raising the shotgun across his chest, he lumbered after her.

A blast of Italian reverberated off the trees. "...in Ispagna son gia mille e tre!"

Tim and Bear stormed the shack first, kicking in the door.

No Skate, no dogs, just the potbellied stove spewing sparks, the mail tub sitting empty before the open loading door.

Bear keyed the portable to the primary channel. "Be advised assault dogs are unaccounted for."

Maybeck shouldered his tear-gas shotgun, trading it for a crowbar he kept hooked in his belt. Moving swiftly toward the mod, he hand-signaled Denley, Palton, and Frisk, though the music would have drowned out a shouted command.

Already Tim was moving across the clearing toward TD's porch. MP5s raised, Guerrera and Zimmer were spread on either side of the door. Freed held open the screen.

A swift peek ascertained that the front room was empty. The stereo volume was cranked so high that, even through the closed bedroom door, the crackle of interlyric static sounded like bubble wrap being crushed.

Tim sidled in, Bear at his shoulder, Thomas and Freed riding their tail.

Tim paused before the closed door and drew in a deep breath. Jamming the stock of the MP5 to his shoulder, he raised a steel-plated boot and kicked right beside the handle. The door splintered inward as they exploded into the room.

TD jerked upright in his bed, bare chest slipping into view beneath a silk robe. A naked girl -- maybe Leah -- was on her knees on the floor before him, sobbing and covering her face.

"Hands up! Hands up!"

TD spun away from them, his hand sliding between the dark sheets. Tim crossed the room like a projectile, seizing him with two fistfuls of robe and hurling him. He hit the wall-mounted stereo at eye level, the sound cutting off in time to accent his crash to the floor.