Hunting Season (20 page)

“What was the favor?”

“The friend is a pilot who does airborne geo-information systems surveys.

Kreiss wanted an aerial map of the Ramsey Arsenal. He told his friend that something was going on there that shouldn’t be, and that it had something to do with his daughter’s disappearance.”

Janet frowned. This was news.

“Let me get this straight,” she said.

“You’re saying that now you want Kreiss to go operational again, because you think he might lead you to some bomb-making cell operating out of this arsenal?”

“Correct,” Bellhouser said.

“Now, if we can put you alongside Kreiss, we can perhaps achieve two objectives: We can find out what he’s doing, and maybe we can catch some serious bombers.”

“Actually,” Foster said, “nobody knows whether or not the antigovernment groups have organized nationally. It isn’t out of the question that they have in a limited way—say in the matter of getting their bombs. But if this works, we might have a chance here to roll up not only the bomb makers but some of their customers.”

Janet frowned, but then she thought she understood. Foster had an unspoken objective on the table: If the Bureau could unearth a bomber cell where aTF had failed to find them, the Bureau stood to count considerable coup. At the expense of aTF, she reminded herself.

“And you think that Kreiss acting independently has a better chance to find something than an overt joint aTF Bureau operation?”

“The last one of those was something less than a signal success,” Bellhouser pointed out.

“And Kreiss is that good?” Janet asked.

The large black man, who had been listening impassively up to now, snorted. Foster introduced him.

“Janet, this is Mr. Ransom. He is a liaison officer to the DCB. The gentleman with him is Mr. Cassidy. Mr. Ransom here has had some, um, experience with Mr. Kreiss.”

“Experience,” Ransom said.

“Yeah, you might call it that. Remind me to show you our Bronco.”

“We’re going to downplay this whole thing at the DCB meeting,” Foster said.

“The last thing we want right now is the aTF charging into the

arsenal. Especially if there’s nothing there, because that would necessarily bring the focus back to Kreiss.”

Janet nodded slowly as she tried to work out all the lines in the water.

Something was still muddled here. Then an awful idea occurred to her.

“You people aren’t holding back information on Kreiss’s daughter, are you?” she asked, looking at Foster and Bellhouser.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” snapped Bellhouser angrily. There was an embarrassed silence at the table. Farnsworth was shaking his head. Foster took a deep breath before responding.

“I won’t dignify that question with an answer, Agent Carter,” he said.

“Look, Edwin Kreiss is a tough nut. Even in retirement, as Mr. Ransom discovered earlier this morning. I’ll let him brief you after this meeting.

This Site R business may be entirely off the mark, in which case we’ll break it off and find another way to deal with Kreiss. But the aTF people who went into the Ramsey complex said it would be an absolutely perfect place for someone to set up a covert explosives lab.”

“But they found nothing?”

“A bunch of big concrete buildings, stripped down and locked up. The Army has some local rent-a-cops under contract. They make routine patrols of the physical plant, and they’ve never seen anything except signs of the occasional deer hunter back in the bunker area. It seems the central industrial area is known locally to be badly contaminated, which tends to keep intruders out. One of the security guards also said that there are rumors of chemical weapons, nerve gas, that sort of stuff, stored in the complex. We checked with the Army, which says that’s total bullshit, but since it helps to keep out intruders, they’ve always been deliberately coy about denying it.”

“Based on his reputation, if something is going on there, Kreiss will uncover it,” Bellhouser said.

“If and when he does, that’s when the DCB would want to reassert control.”

“And bring in some more assets, like maybe the aTF?”

“Or the appropriate Bureau people,” Foster said.

“And also because if someone hurt or killed his daughter, and those other two kids, you know—they broke into the arsenal on a lark, stumbled onto something, and somebody took them—Edwin Kreiss is likely to stake them out naked on the forest floor and build small fires on their bellies. For starters.”

“Sounds about right to me,” Janet said.

Ransom grinned in the background, but Foster and Bellhouser did not

see any humor in it, “The objective,” Bellhouser said, “over and above our Kreiss problem, is to see if we can smash the whole thing—the bomb consultant, his lab, and his conduits into the violent antigovernment groups.”

“These are the people who bomb whole buildings full of innocent civilians,” Foster said.

“Remember OK City? The day-care center?”

Ransom stopped grinning. Janet nodded. That was certainly a worthwhile objective.

“All right, I think I understand. And Kreiss is not to know anything about all this, correct? I offer to help him where I can, and then keep you people informed via our office here?”

“You said she was smart,” Bellhouser murmured to Farnsworth.

Puh-leeze, Janet thought.

“This all assumes Kreiss will give me the time of day,” she pointed out.

“He doesn’t exactly strike me as a team player.”

“He may or may not accept your help,” Foster said.

“The first thing we want to know is whether or not he’s been into the arsenal, and what, if anything, he’s found there. How you get that information will be entirely up to you.”

This guy’s a master of the obvious, Janet thought.

“It’s been several days,” she said.

“Since the incident in that kid’s apartment, I mean. We may be a little late here.”

“For what it’s worth, he was gone all night last night,” Ransom said.

“And when he came back, he also anticipated that somebody might be waiting there in his cabin.”

“How? we wonder,” Bellhouser asked rhetorically.

Janet kept her face a perfect blank.

“Maybe he is just that good,” she said.

“Especially if he’s working something after you guys told him never to go operational again.”

“Perhaps,” Bellhouser said, giving her a speculative look.

“But for now, this is a Bureau/fustice Department play. With a little help from our Agency friends here.”

Agency friends? Janet thought. Then she realized Bellhouser was talking about the two so-called liaison men.

“And aTF doesn’t suspect you’ve got something going?” she asked.

“We think not,” Bellhouser said.

“If Kreiss turns up solid evidence of a bomber cell, we’ll take it to the DCB, and, of course, that will fold in aTF

But right now, Kreiss and what he’s doing is our focus.”

“What this ‘we’ shit, white woman?” Ransom murmured.

“Maybe you should go deal with that crazy motherfucker. Him and his fifty-caliber rifle.”

Bellhouser looked over at Ransom.

“I will if I have to, since you failed to deliver the message.”

“Didn’t need to,” Ransom said.

“He doesn’t think it’s you.”

“Huh?” Janet said.

“What message? What are you two talking about?”

Bellhouser ignored her question.

“We’ll coordinate this through Mr.

Farnsworth. You will report exclusively to him. Think of him as your field controller.”

Field controller, Janet thought with another mental roll of her eyes.

Just call me Bond, Janet Bond.

“Okay,” she said.

“Boss, would you please back-brief Larry Talbot?” She looked at her watch.

“It’s Friday afternoon.

I should get in touch with Mr. Kreiss ASAP, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” Foster said.

Janet hesitated, an image of Edwin Kreiss’s watchful face in her mind.

“You don’t think Kreiss will tumble to all this?” she asked.

“He seems pretty… perceptive.”

“Not if it’s done right,” Foster said.

“Think of it as the ‘frog in the pot’ analogy: You drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, out he comes. Put him in a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the heat? He boils to death without ever realizing he’s in trouble.”

Janet just looked at Foster. From her brief acquaintance with Edwin Kreiss, she saw a hundred things wrong with his little analogy.

“And Mr. Ransom here has some equipment to show you. Why don’t you go with him, while we sort out communications and coordination with Mr. Farnsworth.”

Janet glanced at Farnsworth, who nodded. She knew she would have to talk to him later, to make sure she understood the real bureaucratic ground rules here. As she got up to leave, the Bellhouser woman was giving her a studied look. It occurred to Janet that their scheme depended entirely on Mr. Kreiss going along with her offer of “help.” The woman’s expression somehow reminded Janet of a snake who’d just missed a rabbit.

She followed Ransom out of the conference room and closed the door behind her. The more she thought about this, the more she thought Kreiss would just blow her off. On the other hand, she had warned him about the Agency people showing up. Maybe he would be grateful. Edwin Kreiss grateful. Sure.

“So,” she said, “what’s this about a fifty-caliber rifle? And a Bronco?”

He shook his head.

“It’s in your impound lot. You know what a Barrett light fifty is?”

“I’m a materials forensics nerdette, so, no. What’s a Barrett light fifty?”

They went down to the basement and then took back stairs out to the multistoried parking garage behind the federal building. A fenced area on the lower level held impounded vehicles. The Bronco was in one corner of the compound, hunkered down in a pool of its body fluids. Ransom walked them over to it.

“A Barrett light fifty is a big-ass rifle. Currently being used by Navy SEALs as a long-range personal communicator. The Army is using it to detonate land mines. He did this with three rounds.”

“Wow. Was he after you guys?”

“Kreiss? No way. He normally doesn’t use guns on people. He uses guns to scare the shit out of people. Like me and Gerald back there at his cabin. We were playing dive the submarine by the time that second round came down the hill. Somebody lets off a Barrett, you know you’re in a world of shit.”

Janet looked at the car and wondered what she’d gotten herself into.

Ransom was watching her.

“I guess I don’t understand,” she said.

“Somebody pops a cap at Bureau agents, the immediate result is that a hundred more agents come kick his ass. Tell me some more about this Kreiss guy.

And you work for the Agency? Did you work with Kreiss?”

“Nobody worked with Edwin Kreiss. For him, maybe, but never with him. That’s part of his charm. And me, I’m just a glorified gofer.”

Janet looked sideways at him. Ransom’s flexible speech patterns were beginning to make her think that he was perhaps being modest.

“Well, look, whatever you are, I’m a regular whiz bang in a federal forensics investigation. You want courtroom-ready evidence to lock some wrong guys up, I’m your agent. I’m here in Roanoke to get some out-of-specialty field experience, which means I have next to no field experience. Get the picture?”

“Got the picture. Man upstairs said you pissed off some heavy dudes.

What you do—tell the truth on ‘em?”

“I was working in the Bureau laboratory. As you may have read, we’ve had some problems there. I told them what the evidence said. Not what they wanted to hear. You know, facts getting in the way of preconceived notions. Some of the bigger bosses hate that.”

“See, we don’t have that problem where I work.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, see, at the Agency, ain’t nobody ever asks for facts in the first place. That way, nothing interferes with their preconceived notions. Lot less friction.”

She smiled.

“I’ll bet. Anyway, I do believe I’m out of my league getting mixed up with a guy like this,” she said, pointing with her chin to the deflated Bronco.

“We all out of our league, Special Agent Carter. That’s why he was so damned effective when he worked for us.”

“I don’t understand. If he’s such a big problem, why don’t you all just gang up and take him in, do some spooky number on him?”

Ransom stopped and looked around.

“You really don’t know, do you?”

he said.

“No, I don’t.”

He looked around again.

“Okay, there’s two reasons. The first is because he’s Edwin Kreiss. Listen, Gerald and me? We were sent to just have us a little talk with the man last night. Just talk, now, nothing heavy.

He don’t come home, and next thing I know, it’s morning and I’m looking for coffee makings. I’m opening a cupboard door and a fuckin’ zoo-ful of goddamn monster-ass lions sound off in that big room.”

“Lions.”

“Fuckin’ right, lions. I never heard a live lion in my fuckin’ life outside of the movies, and I not only knew it was lions but that there was a hundred of them bastards in the house. We talkin’ loud motherfuckers, aw right I mean, we talkin’ a hundred fifty decibels’ worth of roaring lions. Then it was a machine gun, blowing all the windows in the house out, along with our eardrums. I’m talkin’ glass flyin’, bullets blowin’ through walls, dishes breakin’—and it’s so loud, I can’t hear myself screamin’.”

“He shoot at his own house?”

“Naw, he didn’t shoot nothin’—then. My man Kreiss does sounds.

These were just sounds. I knew that—still scared the shit out of me. And Gerald? My man Gerald crapped himself.”

“He does this with what—speakers? Tapes?”

“Tactical sound. It’s a Kreiss trademark. See, if you can hear it but you can’t see it, then your imagination automatically comes up with the worst case monster, right? And if you get your target spooked enough, he’s gonna move in straight lines. He put a rattlesnake tape in a guy’s car one time—rattles, hiss, ground sounds, the whole nine yards. Dude drove it into a tree tryin’ to find that snake. I gotta tell you, I knew all about this, but Gerald an’ me? We both out the fuckin’ door in about two nanoseconds, all that shit starts up, runnin’ for the Bronco, and then, then, here come the crack of doom to split the engine block into four pieces.”