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by Greg Bear

  The doors of the Impala slammed and the car’s tires squealed.

  ‘They’re fleeing the scene!’

  The wide, heavy car peeled out from in front of the motel and took a sharp left down Ness Avenue, the longest street in Hogantown.

  ‘Gives him room to pick up speed,’ Rowland said, spinning the wheel and turning left as she lit up the dash lights. ‘He’s going for the Freedom.’

  If the Impala made it to the Freedom Highway, they would have to change their plans, not a good thing. Highway pursuit was not desirable since it was always rush hour and the next off ramp—so they had been told—led directly into Gangsta City. In fact the onramp led nowhere and the nonexistent Gangsta City meant a forfeit.

  Rowland gunned the Caprice. A few wary pedestrians jumped to the curb and flipped them off. Heads leaned out of windows on second-floor buildings.

  ‘This is fun,’ she said. ‘Like playing Vice City when I was a kid.’

  ‘My dad never let me play that,’ William said.

  ‘Makes you smarter,’ Rowland said.

  Then, abruptly, team three’s van roared into the intersection ahead. The Impala skidded to a halt, tail wagging, tires smoking. They were a block from the onramp. Lee got out and drew down on the fugitives.

  The blue Camaro came to a stop at the cross street ahead. Two people got out, one male, one female. Both put up their hands. From William’s perspective, both cars were in a line—and the engineering van was moving slowly onto that line, a bad situation for putting colleagues in jeopardy.

  Team two came out of Melvin Purvis Boulevard and pulled up behind them. Two unknown vehicles joined the tail of the procession, honking. William and Rowland unstrapped their holsters. Rowland pulled up to the curb twenty feet behind the Impala, parking at an angle so that the engine block provided maximum protection. The visor cam blinked red. ‘We’re on the record,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  William exited first and squatted behind the door with gun poised to gauge the situation. The two occupants of the Impala faced forward, hands out of sight.

  ‘Exit your car!’ Rowland shouted.

  ‘FBI,’ William prompted. ‘Tell ’em.’

  Fuck. ‘This is the FBI!’ Rowland called out. ‘Get out of the car with your hands in plain sight.’

  William repeated the command in Spanish.

  They did not respond.

  ‘Get out of the car, hands in plain sight, now.’

  Smoke puffed from the tailpipe. The driver, presumably del Torres, stuck out his arm and waved as if giving them permission to go around. ‘Joker,’ William said.

  Team two angled their car and blocked the street behind them. Matty exited with a pump shotgun and positioned himself behind the Caprice’s right rear bumper.

  William tried to focus on the corner video image in his gogs but sweat was dripping in his eye and he could barely make out anything.

  ‘Team three in place,’ Henson announced in his ear. ‘We’re at the corner of Hoover and Grand. We’re going to block their escape.’

  William instructed, ‘Pull around and hem them in, team two.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Matty said. ‘Fred, stay with team one. I’ll block.’

  Al-Husam exited the car, pistol drawn, finger resting on the trigger guard. The Glock had no safety, merely a little flippy switch on the trigger itself that went down way too smooth and fast. Matty drove the Crown Victoria around the Impala and wedged the right front wheel against the curb, almost slamming their bumper into a blue mailbox.

  ‘They’re eyeballing and grinning,’ Matty said. Al-Husam walked up behind William.

  ‘It’s my collar,’ Rowland said.

  ‘Quaint,’ Al-Husam said.

  ‘Just, you know, throw down on them, with your guns,’ Rowland said. Her face was slick with sweat. Beneath the jacket, William’s shirt clung damp as a washrag despite the coolness in the morning air.

  Rowland approached the left bumper of the Impala, parked a generous three feet from the curb. She assumed a classic Weaver stance and trained her mock SIG on the heads in the rear window. William stayed in a crouch behind his door, also aiming at the Impala’s rear window. Al-Husam took a stance behind the Caprice’s driver side door.

  ‘Yo, lady,’ said a youngish voice from the Impala. The window rolled down in jerks.

  Rowland stopped. ‘Exit the car now,’ she called out. ‘Show me your hands.’ She would have them out and flat on the street in seconds.

  ‘Lady, we are just hangin’,’ the young man said. ‘Just drivin’ and chillin’. No hassles?’ Arms covered with crude gang tats, tiny goatee, hennaed lips smirking, he looked like the real thing, a true murdering scumbag.

  In Hogantown, he is real, William thought. He can kill your career.

  William moved to the rear bumper. He took another step. The young man hung his head out the window, and his hands, both empty. He was grinning like a happy whore, more than a little obvious. The driver stared straight ahead, hands still on the wheel. William wondered if all those hands were real. Rubber hands had been used in the past; you walk up to the window and blam.

  ‘Exit the vehicle. Get out now and lie on the ground face down with arms and legs spread!’ Rowland ordered. ‘Both of you!’

  ‘Tell us what you want, bitch,’ the young man said. ‘We doing nothin’, we got nothin’.’

  They weren’t complying. They were going to force the issue. William sidled around the bumper. The car had been through nine different kinds of hell, a mottled patchwork of paint and primer, but it was still chugging along, still being targeted by naïve recruits. What would they really throw at you? Think icy. Stay tactical.

  William glanced left to see where Rowland was. Suddenly, his shins exploded in pain. His legs flew backward and out from under him and he came down on the left rear panel of the Impala, then toppled into the street, barely breaking his fall with his right hand. The pistol discharged a paintball and flew from his grip. Rolling to one side, he saw a rubber bar waggling from a spring-loaded hinge below the Impala’s rear door.

  In the texts they called it a cop blade. A cholo trick. In real life it would have been made of steel and honed as sharp as a sword. It would have sliced off his feet.

  Rowland saw William go down. Inside the Impala, both heads ducked. Her partner was writhing on the asphalt, trying to roll up onto the curb. In real life they could—they would back over him.

  Al-Husam and Rowland aimed and fired. Paintballs exploded red and purple across the Impala’s rear window.

  The car’s engine roared and the wheels spun, throwing rubber smoke all over William. The Impala barely grazed the bumper of team two’s Crown Victoria, making it rock, and accelerated down the street. Matty and Lee blazed away, scoring more paintball hits on the side windows and door panels. Puffs of purple and red trailed behind the Impala as it sprinted toward freedom, belching gray smoke. It had reached thirty miles an hour when loud bangs and ear-piercing shrieks echoed between the brick buildings. Long ropes of steaming pink shot from both sides of the street. Team four had efficiently and quickly dropped flares to halt traffic on the side streets and set up bubble-gum pylons at the end of the block. The gum net wrapped around the Impala, sizzling and popping. Its trailing edges grabbed at the asphalt and stuck, spinning the car around, while the span of the net slapped across the windshield and gelled to the consistency of tire rubber. The car jounced on its shocks and rolled on for fifty feet, dragging both pylons sparking and clanging down the street.

  The Impala’s engine died.

  Matty and Al-Husam gave chase on foot and took up positions on both sides of the gummed car. Pistols poised, they ordered the occupants to stay where they were and keep their hands in view or they would shoot. Finch and Greavy joined them, happy as larks at having expended precious FBI resources, and with such a loud bang, too.

  The actors, barely visible through the pink strands and paintball splatters, raised their hands. They would have to be cut o
ut with box knives. Right now, they weren’t going anywhere. Al-Husam kept his gun trained on them.

  Rowland stood by William and watched as teams three and four joined Al-Husam and Matty, taking up front and rear.

  ‘Goddammit,’ William said, over and over, rolling back and forth, clutching his shins.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘I should have seen it. I should have seen it coming. Fucking cholo car.’

  ‘You need a medic?’

  ‘Christ, no, it was just a rubber hose. I’m fine.’ He glared up at her. ‘Don’t you goddamn laugh at me. It hurts.’ Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  ‘Nobody’s laughing,’ Rowland said solemnly. She sat on the curb beside him.

  ‘I’m toast,’ William said.

  Farrow seemed to come out of nowhere. He was trying hard to hold a grim face. Clearly he was enjoying this. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ William said, pushing up to his feet. The whites of his eyes showed like a skittish horse.

  ‘It ain’t over until it’s over,’ Farrow said in a low growl. He held up a box-cutter and thumbed out a length of blade. ‘Get those bastards out of that vehicle and make your arrest. Pick up your pieces and finish your job. Tonight, meet me in the motor pool garage. You’re gonna buff and scrape my car until it shines.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Washington State

  Griff looked over the map he had drawn. It showed places on the property where they had seen children playing or people walking. Little x’s peppered the paper, safe places and paths to the houses, the barn, just in case. He drew lines, boundaries.

  The children tended to stay away from the barn.

  Everybody stayed away from the barn.

  Only a crazy man would mine or booby trap the yard where his own children and grandchildren were playing, right?

  After all the years Griff had been tracking the Patriarch, he still could not say, with certainty, that they could rule out that possibility.

  They had been ready to move out when edicts had come down simultaneously from FBI headquarters and the Attorney General—no big raid, no massive force maneuver, on any date that anyone by any stretch of the imagination could say was Good Friday. If something had gone wrong—or even if they had done their jobs perfectly, and nobody had died—then the headlines could wreak havoc with federal law enforcement in general. The whole country was on edge. It had been on edge for over thirty years, worried and challenged and bitten from without and within. America was half-crazy with suppressed rage.

  They didn’t have much time. The Patriarch would surely find out something in the next couple of days, and there were any number of ways he could slip out of the farm and get clean away.

  A small white bus drove onto the farm during the midmorning. While Griff notified the incursion team at the trailhead, Rebecca counted the women and children boarding the vehicle, parked just yards from the main house’s front porch—two middle-aged women in long dresses and six younger children dressed in their best church clothes. The children boarded the bus with cheery energy.

  Griff played back the digital video record and counted heads again, to be sure.

  Cap Benson, Charles Sprockett of the ATFE, and SAC John Keller, Griff’s Seattle boss, climbed into the tower at ten thirty and looked over the evidence. They conferred briefly.

  ‘Are we sure that’s all the dependents down there?’ Sprockett asked.

  ‘No,’ Griff said. ‘Jacob thinks there might be two young adult males, and so do I, based on those bank robberies. They’re not on the bus. There might be two more kids, and we’ve been talking over the possibility that the males have girlfriends or wives. We haven’t seen the kids all together to count them, but—’

  ‘There’s a redheaded girl, and maybe a white-blond boy of five or six. We did not see them get on the bus,’ Rebecca said. ‘Younger than the others. They may be the Patriarch’s grandchildren. They may all be living in the rear house.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they go to Easter services?’ SAC Keller asked.

  Levine shrugged. ‘Some sort of sharing of familial power. Training his sons to be heads of households. Or, they’re just figments of the light and our imagination.’

  ‘Well, his two sons are certainly not on that bus,’ Keller said.

  ‘What if they start firing back? The kids, I mean,’ Levine said.

  ‘You think they’d do that?’ Sprockett asked. ‘You think he’s trained them all to fight?’

  Levine rubbed his forehead with two close-spaced fingers. ‘Chambers is hard core. The Big Time’s coming, and a White Christ out of the north is going to scourge the ungodly and drive the Mud People into their graves, from which they will be resurrected as the zombie slaves of true Aryans everywhere. Anybody who doesn’t defend themselves will be raped and eaten alive by the Mud People.’

  ‘No shit,’ Cap Benson said.

  ‘He’s off the main sequence, philosophically speaking.’

  Keller said, ‘Griff, you’ve tracked him for two decades. This may be the best opportunity we’ve got. We can’t afford to lose him to old age…or let him bomb a few more clinics, if he’s so inclined.’

  ‘Or worse,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Are your seriously thinking there’s a bioterror operation going on down there?’ Levine asked. ‘I have to say, that just isn’t the Patriarch’s style. He’s classic. He loves to blow stuff up.’

  Rebecca smiled sweetly. Keller said, ‘Washington doesn’t want a raid. They’re afraid we’ll hurt some kids down there.’

  Griff rubbed his cheek stubble. ‘Obviously, I’m going to have to go in alone and reconnoiter.’

  ‘The hell you say,’ Keller commented dryly.

  ‘It’s worth a shot. We’ve never actually met. He let the deputy go in and out—offered him coffee and biscuits. I think I could go in and take a closer look, ask some questions, and come out alive.’

  ‘On what pretext?’ Keller asked.

  ‘I’d have a better chance,’ Rebecca said. ‘A social worker. Census-taker. I look less like FBI than any of you.’

  ‘The Patriarch hates social workers,’ Griff said.

  ‘She might try for the harem,’ Sprockett said. No one seemed to think that was a good idea.

  ‘Can you make me look like an aging yardbird?’ Griff said. ‘I already have a few tats.’

  Sprockett and Keller stared at him.

  ‘Time’s short,’ Griff said.

  ‘Shit,’ Sprockett said.

  Keller got on his cell phone to issue instructions. Sprockett and Rebecca, working different phones, told the agents in town to let them know when the bus arrived.

  Griff took a deep breath. He hated wearing body armor—especially the new reactive stuff. It was thin but it wriggled whenever you walked. Made him feel like he was in a living straitjacket.

  ‘You are what you eat,’ Rebecca told him as she followed Griff down the steps to the first landing. ‘What’d you have for breakfast this morning?’

  ‘Flakes,’ Griff said, grinning back at her. He then paused to look through the trees. His eyes were wide and he had difficulty taking a cleansing breath. What would it be like after they suited him up?

  Over the next few hours, they procured a beat-up Ford pickup, a pair of denim dungarees, a T-shirt, and three quick forearm tattoos, on top of the two he already had, courtesy of one of Cap Benson’s backup team who moonlighted as a makeup artist. Benson called up Monroe to find out the latest trends in jailhouse art. Ten minutes later, they sent him some scans. Skulls, ripped hearts, Jesus on the cross, scorpions, and chains were still big. For some reason, fat seated Buddhas were having a good run—wearing berets and cradling Tommy guns in their ample laps.

  As a last touch, Rebecca shaved Griff’s head down to a stubble.

  ‘You look like someone I’d boot out of town,’ Benson said.

  Rebecca was less sanguine. ‘Twenty to one he’ll still peg you as FBI.’

  ‘All right,’ Grif
f said. ‘Tell me what I should look for.’

  Rebecca pulled a lab catalog from her travel bag.

  The mile down the dirt road in the noonday sun was long and bumpy. The trip would have been pleasant, but there was no way he could know what waited at the end.

  Fresh to the FBI, he had carried a folded file card he would read whenever he ventured into a dangerous situation. On that card he had printed his own little set of mantras:

  You can relax and trust your training. You know you’re good.

  You can count on coming out of anything alive, you’re so damned good.

  Say it to yourself: I will live and prosper, and the bad guys will rue the day.

  He had lost that card on the day his team had encountered the Israeli gunbot, but he knew the mantras by heart. They still had juju.

  Griff steered a slow curve around a big cedar stump, found the less bouncy part of the road, slowed, then glanced down at a black lapel button, a small camera that would feed video to the team forming at the main road and the smaller team working their way through the woods from the fire tower.

  Hidden in the bagginess of the dungarees was his SIG, strapped to his waist and available through a large side pocket. Someone hadn’t positioned the Velcro fasteners properly. One of them was chafing.

  ‘SIG’s nothing,’ he reminded himself. ‘SIG’s a peashooter.’

  The gunbot…

  A team of fifty agents from the FBI and the Secret Service had stormed the Muncrow Building in downtown Portland two years before, preparing to arrest ten Serbian counterfeiters. They had been met by seven guys and two women in body armor, expecting no mercy and wielding a savage array of automatic weapons—but what lay hidden in the corrugated steel shed that blocked their only exit route—what had brought down nearly all of the team within twenty seconds, cutting them into bloody gobbets—had been an Israeli Sholem-Schmidt D-7, a self-directed, insect-carriage automated cannon. None of them had never seen one outside of Popular Science magazine.