Hunting Season (40 page)

“Excuse me, sir,” the weight lifter said.

“We’re TA security, and we’d like you to come with us into the office.” His voice was surprisingly high and no match for his body, but he made sure Kreiss saw him reach behind his back and pat the lump under his T-shirt where the gun was. The second one was already moving behind Kreiss in case he decided to run.

From their expressions, it looked like they almost wished he would.

“What’s the problem?” he asked, trying to see if McGarand was still visible.

“The problem is you’ve been hanging around here, acting in a suspicious manner, that’s the problem, sir. Now let’s go.”

They walked with Kreiss in between them, close, but not too close. He thought fast. If they got him inside, he’d miss McGarand leaving. He stopped, but the one on his right quietly folded a massive paw around

his upper right arm and he was walking again, conscious of the stares from two truckers coming out of the main door. They had to wait in the middle of the plaza while a big semi roared by them in second gear, followed closely by a propane truck. They escorted him down a hall between the restaurant and the shop, past the men’s room and the showers, and into a small office at the back of the building. There, the whale patted him down and then indicated he should sit in a straight-backed chair directly in front of the desk. Kreiss chose to remain standing just to the left of the chair.

The weight lifter sat down behind the desk, while the fat man kicked the door shut and then stood close behind Kreiss.

“So: what the fuck you up to here, bud?” the weight lifter asked.

“You pull in, park at the gas pump, walk out back, come back, gas your van, then park it over next to our truck—not your smartest move, now, was it?—and you sit there and wait.”

Kreiss said nothing. Then the weight lifter picked up a Polaroid camera from the desk and shot it off in Kreiss’s face. While waiting for the photo to develop, he explained to Kreiss that unless he could explain what he was doing here, they’d call the state cops and have him arrested for trespassing.

“Actually,” said the whale from behind him, “we’ll tell ‘em that we caught you wearing panties and waggling your wienie through that little hole in the partition between the stalls in the men’s room.” Kreiss felt the man’s foot rubbing suggestively up the inside of his leg.

“They’ll take you over to the Roanoke city jail, and, hell, you know cops, they’ll tell everybody they see.”

“See, we’ve got this hijacking problem out here in the truck stops,” the weight lifter said.

“And you were acting a whole lot like a lookout, okay?”

“I still think he was just cruisin’,” the whale said, patting him on the ass now and sniggering.

“I was looking for something,” Kreiss said. He reached into the upper pocket of his coveralls and withdrew a retinal-disrupter cube. He felt the whale behind him shift when he reached up into his pocket but then relax when all he produced was something that looked like a fat flashbulb cube.

“One of these,” Kreiss said, offering it to the weight lifter and closing his eyes tightly. As the man reached for it, Kreiss fired it into his face. The big man grunted and then just sat there, stunned, as Kreiss turned, went down on one knee, grabbed the chair by its legs, whirled around, and hit the fat man behind him across both lower legs. The whale grunted and bent forward, giving Kreiss, still crouching low,

the opening he needed to drive his fist into the man’s fleshy throat. The man’s eyes bulged and he started to gag, then sank down to his knees, both hands at his throat, his face already turning red. Kreiss checked on the man behind the desk, but he was still just sitting there, his pupils the size of BBs. The phone rang at that moment, but Kreiss ignored it and went out the door. There was a fire exit to his right, which he took. The door let him out into the back parking lot, which was still wall-to-wall semis. There was no sign of McGarand. He swore and walked rapidly to the van. The cube flash would keep the big man immobilized for another few minutes, and the whale—well, the whale might wish he had a blowhole about now.

He got to the van, jumped in, and took off across the plaza. When he got to the exit, he paused. He looked back and saw McGarand’s truck still parked right where he’d left it. He didn’t know what to do, other than to get the hell out of there. But not too far, he thought—somehow he had to get back on McGarand’s tail. There’d be state cops there pretty quick, and the security people had seen him in a phone company van. Then a cold wave washed over him—he’d forgotten the Polaroid: They had his racking picture! He turned and drove the van into the motel’s parking lot and took it all the way behind the second building of the complex. What he needed now was another vehicle. He could steal one possibly, but it wasn’t likely that people pulling into a motel were going to leave their keys in their cars. Then he remembered McGarand’s truck. A pickup truck.

Every pickup driver he’d ever met always stashed a spare key somewhere outside the truck.

He walked as casually as he could back through the motel complex, staying away from the checkin lobby and keeping an eye on the big truck plaza next door for cop cars. He got to McGarand’s truck, knelt down on the side that faced the plaza, and began feeling along the frame for a magnetic key box. He had reached the tail end of the truck when the first emergency vehicle came down the ramp from the interstate, lights and siren going, and wheeled into the plaza. It wasn’t a cop car, but an ambulance.

Good, he thought—a little more time to look. He searched all along the bumper and frame on the back of the truck, then up the left side. May be out of luck here, he thought. The ambulance had pulled up in front of the building and the attendants were hurrying in. He fingered the exhaust pipe, which was where he often put his key. Nothing. Cops here any minute now, he thought, and went back to the rear bumper.

There was a Reese hitch welded to the back frame, and the receiver had a ball tang inserted and locked with a pin. He pulled the pin,

extracted the tang, and felt inside the receiver. Nothing but some grease on his hand.

He was putting the tang back into the square hole when he saw the wad of duct tape on the very end of the tang. Bingo.

He peeled the key out of the tape and reinserted the tang just as more blue strobe lights lit up the plaza. He looked over his shoulder and saw a state police cruiser bristling with Lo-Jack antennas pull into the truck stop. Kreiss let himself into the truck, started it up, and quickly drove it over to the motel and behind the front buildings to where the phone company van was parked. He grabbed his bag and the gun out of the van and threw them into McGarand’s truck, locked the van with the keys inside, and then got into the truck.

Now what? he thought. No—now where? Where the hell was McGarand? He wanted to go cruise that back parking lot next door, but that was out of the question now, and besides, there was something sticking in his mind. Very conscious of the commotion next door, he closed his eyes and tried to reconstruct what he had seen McGarand do. Come out of the building, carrying a coffee thermos, move his truck to no man-land between the motel and the truck stop, and then walk back out to the parking lot out back, where the big rigs were. Then what? The security cops had grabbed him up, and they had walked across the parking lot to the office. No, wait—they had stopped for a truck. No, two trucks. A big semi and a propane truck. A. propane truck! Son of a bitch, it had been that green-and-white tanker truck he’d seen in the power plant maintenance bay!

He started up the pickup and drove out of the motel lot and back up toward the interchange. There was a second cop car in the plaza now.

Which way? McGarand had been going south, so south it was. He pulled onto 1-81 and merged quickly. The pulsing blue lights were visible in his mirror for almost a mile beyond the interchange. He put it up to just under eighty; McGarand had a pretty good head start. Then he heard Janet Carter’s beeper start to chirp in his equipment bag.

Janet awoke to the sound of her phone ringing. She sat up and groaned out loud. Every muscle in her body protested the sudden move. She opened her eyes and tried to focus on the clock. It looked like two something, but her eyes weren’t working. Neither was her brain. The phone kept ringing, so she sat up straighter, cleared her throat, and answered.

“Janet, this is Ted Farnsworth. I’m sorry to be rousting you out like this.”

“That’s okay, boss,” she said, clearing her throat again.

“What’s happened?”

“We think we got an answer to the pager, but it’s a mobile and the signal died away. We’ve set up a conference call-forward tie between your line and the number I sent to the pager. Assuming he calls back, it will come in direct to you, but we’ll be listening. The question of the hour is, Where is he and what’s he doing? And then—” “And then you still want me to tell him his daughter died in that explosion?”

Farnsworth hesitated, then said, “That’s affirmative. And that this Browne McGarand guy was responsible for that explosion. McGarand’s driving a ‘98 Ford F-Two fifty south on I-Eighty-one toward Greensboro;

in fact, we’ve just had a sighting report on the vehicle from the state cops.”

She said nothing for a moment.

“Janet,” Farnsworth began, but then she cut him off.

“If McGarand’s driving south on I-Eighty-one, then he certainly isn’t going to Washington with a bomb,” she said.

“So why are we doing this to Kreiss? Why not have the state cops pick up McGarand and bring him in for questioning?”

“Because we have no grounds for a warrant, and the state cops won’t arrest him unless we produce a federal warrant. I already thought of that.”

“But still, if he’s going south—” “He may very well be going south because he knows we’re onto him.

He goes south in plain view while members of his cell take a big bomb to D.C.”

Janet didn’t know what to say.

“Janet,” Farnsworth said.

“You’re the only voice in our office Kreiss will listen to. He can find out what the rest of us can’t—whether or not there is a real threat to Washington.”

“You’re assuming Kreiss will give a shit about a bomb threat to Washington.

Hell, if this guy hadn’t kidnapped his daughter, he’d probably help the guy drive. I think he’ll just hunt down McGarand and do whatever he does to him. And then we won’t know anything.”

It was Farnsworth’s turn to stop talking.

“Look, boss,” she said.

“Telling Kreiss his daughter is dead is bullshit.

Why not tell the truth here? Tell Kreiss we’ve recovered his daughter, that she’s alive but comatose over there in Blacksburg. Let him go there, see her, satisfy himself that she’s at least safe, and then tell him about the McGarands.”

Farnsworth didn’t say anything.

“I still say, if that guy is headed south, there’s no immediate threat. Put surveillance on him, track him, maybe even let him see the tail. Personally, I think Kreiss might play ball, as long as we tell him the truth. The converse is not true: You do not want Edwin Kreiss coming to your house one night after you’ve lied to him about a thing like this. And it would be a really cruel lie, wouldn’t it, especially if she does die and he never gets a chance to see her?”

Farnsworth still didn’t say anything.

“Let me tell him what the hell is going on. I’ll even go meet him at the hospital. These bureaucratic games with the Agency, aTF, those executive lizards from Justice—who knows what that’s all about? The kid in the hospital is real. And she’s somebody’s daughter.”

“Shit,” Farnsworth said.

“I’ve been up too long. This whole thing. Ken Whittaker was a good friend—” “Sir, you don’t have to tell Foster and company anything. Let me tell Kreiss the truth, let him see his daughter, and then let’s work this bomb problem. By the book this time. Our book, not these other assholes’ book.”

“Okay, Janet,” Farnsworth said with a sigh.

“You’re probably right. I guess if this McGarand’s headed into North Carolina, it gives us some time to straighten this thing out. Okay. We’ll patch the call in as soon as Kreiss tries again.”

Janet felt a surge of victory.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

Kreiss stood by his daughter’s hospital bed and tried to control himself.

She looks so thin, he thought. Lynn was an athlete and normally radiated good health and fitness. Now her face was gaunt and slightly jaundiced.

He held her hand under the blanket and just watched her breathe.

She wasn’t on a ventilator, but there was an IV drip going into her left wrist. Her face was bruised, and her normally vibrant hair lay limp on her head like a skullcap. A bank of machines kept score on her vital signs above the bed. Coma, the docs said. As opposed to profound vegetative state. The “good” kind of coma—if there was such a thing—where a badly

abused body checks out for awhile to work on healing itself without having to deal with the outside world. The room lighting was subdued and there was a quiet music stream coming from somewhere.

“She was conscious at the explosion site?” he asked.

“I didn’t see her,” Janet said.

“I was being scraped off the concrete myself.” Kreiss eyed her, probably noticing for the first time her own puffy face and stiff posture.

“Apparently, she spoke to whoever found her. They got ‘hydrogen bomb’ and “Washington’ out other, but that was all.”

“Hydrogen bomb and Washington. Sounds good to me. We’re at just about the right distance, down here in Blacksburg, and the prevailing winds are on our side.”

“Washington is taking a somewhat different view,” she said.

“But this whole bomb theory is pretty screwed up. One moment, we’re all running around at top end because we think some bad guys are on the way, as we speak, to bring an H-bomb to Fun City. The next, we’re standing down in the regroup mode. The Bureau is fucking around with the aTF, and the Justice Department is fucking around with the Bureau, and ABC is tucking around with DEF. You know.”

Kreiss nodded.