Sweepers

by P. T. Deutermann

  The door latches were working, but the doors were frozen. Train then tried all the windows, but none of them would move, either. He held the window switch for the driver’s door down until the circuit breaker under the dash popped. He swore again. There was a new dripping sound, somewhere in the back.

  Karen peered at the stuff on the windows.’ “I think they’re stuck. This stuff’s like glue.” She turned around, looking past Train’s legs, but it was all over the back window, too.

  The right-side windows were clear, but they were compressed into the embankment. The gas fumes were getting stronger. ” ‘ We’ve got to get out of here,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. Train tried all the window switches again. Another circuit breaker popped.

  “Ignition’s off, right? It may not ignite,” he said, twisting to look the darkened back of the vehicle. The back of the car looked like a coroner’s vehicle, with the windows painted black. “Unless it gets to the catalytic converter. And after that run, that thing’s going to be red-hot,”

  “We’re over in a ditch, Train. That gas is going to pool.

  We’ve got to get out of here!” ‘ “That stuff looks like plastic of some kind,” he said. “If we could get a window open, we could cut our way out.”

  He popped the latch on the door compartment and held up the knife.

  “But these god damned electric windows are dead,” she said

  “We can’t get at it.” Then she remembered the Glock.

  “What if we use this to shoot a window out?” she asked.

  “Break the glass and then cut that stuff.”

  Train thought for a moment and then nodded. “Right.

  Don’t bother with the windshield. It’s safety glass. Do the window on the driver’s side. Shoot a pattern-three across the top, three across the bottom, and then one in the middle.

  Then I can kick it out, I hope. Put something in your ears.”

  Karen stuffed some Kleenex in her ears as Train did likewise. Then he suggested they get in the backseat to avoid flying glass. They ended up standing on the fight-reardoor panel. The smell of gasoline was much stronger in the back.

  “Is this safe?” she asked. “To fire the gun with all these fumes?”

  “No choice. I still can’t see anything. Do it, Karen.”

  She tried not to think about whd or what might be waiting for them if and when they got out of the car. She aimed the Glock at the left top edge of the window while Train covered his ears. She had to pull hard on the trigger before the gun fired once, and the noise was deafening in the tightly enclosed car. A starred hole appeared roughly where she had aimed. She pulled again, and in her excitement she fired five more rounds before stopping. She was astonished to see that Train was grinning at her through the pall of gunsmoke, but then he was moving, swinging his body over into the front seat, his chest half on and half off the front seat’s backrest, his massive legs kicking up at the window, dislodging a hail of glass shards. But then his foot was punching into what looked like a rubber sheet outside the.window.

  Karen coughed, choking. The car was now full of smoke as well as gasoline fumes. Train was coming back over the seat, his shoes crunching on shards of glass as he fumbled for the knife., He banged away at one comer of the - glass with the butt of the knife and then cut a line through the plastic skin covering the window aperture. Karen crouched low in the backseat to get away from the smoke and the gasoline fumes, fighting the urge to scramble past him and out that hole.

  Suddenly, the air above her head cleared and she looked up. Train was slashing at the rubbery coating now, making the hole bigger. Then he leaned back down into the backseat.

  “Give me the Glock,” he said. She passed it up to him, and he stuck his head and fight hand out of the hole. Immediately, he ducked back down.

  “Forgot. Can’t see.

  Everything’s still purple. You look.”

  She squeezed up against him in the space between the front and back seats, poked her head out of the hole in the rubbery substance, -and looked around. There was only the pale stripe of the gravel road cutting through the dark woods. The other car was gone. But the stink of gasoline was even stronger outside. She ducked back down into the car.

  “Looks clear,” she said. “But there’s definitely gas pooling somewhere.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll boost you through the window.

  You cut the stuff off the door, ‘cause there’s no way I can fit through that window.”

  She nodded, handed him the Glock, and squeezed her head and shoulders through the hole. He hunched down on the right-side door, wrapped his arms around her legs at the knees, and straightened up. She felt like a Polaris missile coming out of that hole, and she promptly lost her balance as she scrambled to find a handhold, finally grabbing the edge of the luggage rack on top of the car. She tore her skirt sliding over the bottom edge of the car but landed on the gravel more or less upright. Train popped his head and one arm out of the hole right after her and gave her the knife.

  In order to free the front door, she had to climb back up on the side of the car to cut away the rubbery dull white film covering the whole left side of the ear. The film was thin but very strong, and it would not peel off the side of the car, so she had to cut through to the seam of the left-front door before being able to yank it open. The rubber clung to the door like a shroud.

  Train climbed out, and together they scrambled wordlessly around the front of the car. But just as they started up the hill, they heard the sound of the car phone ringing.

  They looked at each other. The phone rang again.

  “Who the hell-” Train said.

  “Mcnair. I’ll bet it’s Mcnair. We called him, remember?”

  “But-“

  “There must be a signal now,” she said. The phone rang again. Karen handed him the knife and ran back around to the side of, the car. But there was no way to reach the phone inside without climbing back up on the side of the car.

  Train was about to help her when something at the back of the Suburban caught his peripheral vision. A whiff of smoke? A tiny white object, back by the bumper. Purplewhite. Fverything tinged with purple. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them, desperately trying to see as he moved carefully toward the back, of the car. Karen was stretching, trying to lean into the car.

  “Karen, wait a minute,” he called as the phone rang again. And then he froze when he recognized what was on the rear bumper. A lighted cigarette was dangling from a string tied to the bumper, about eighteen inches over the shimmering puddle in the ditch. The ash had burned almost back to the string.

  “Karen! Karen! Get, out! Get away, now!” he shouted, and then began to backpedal sideways across the hill, trying to get to her.

  Karen had been halfway into the hole in the driver’s window when she heard him yelling. She turned, saw the look on his face, dropped back off the car, and bolted up the bank, where Train grabbed her. Together, they scrambled up the hill. An instant later, the car exploded behind them in a bright red-and-yellow fireball. They both hit the ground as the hot compression wave seared the night air over their heads, and then bits of hot metal and flaming plastic were’ clattering around them on the wet hillside. Down on the road, the remains of the Suburban burned furiously, hot enough to keep them backing UP the hill, hands held by the sides of their faces to ward off the intense heat. The road and the surrounding trees were thrown into stark visual relief in the yellow-orange glare. They stopped, about fifty yards up the hill and sat down in the underbrush.

  Karen examined her torn skirt, ragged stockings, and uniform jacket. “Remind me never to go parking with you in the woods again,” she muttered.

  Train grinned weakly in the firelight. “Well,” he said, “I try to give all the girls a hot time. The good news is that fire ought to bring somebody..”

  “The good guys this time, I hope,” she said, trying to cover her thighs with the tom skirt. “I’ve got to go buy som
e fatigues if you and I are going to keep seeing each other like this.”

  He grinned again and put -his arm around her. But then he grew serious.

  “We were lucky. Very damned lucky.

  Again.” He described the cigarette hanging off the bumper.

  “It’s the oldest time-delay fuse in the business, and it leaves no trace. Once the cigarette burns back to the string, it drops.

  In our case, into that ditchful of gasoline.”

  “Then he meant to kill us this time.”

  “No doubt in my military mind,”

  Train said, shifting his bulk in the grass. She noticed for the first time that there was a cut on his forehead. Down below, the burning hulk was settling now as the frame deformed and bits of the interior fell out onto the road. The hood popped open as they watched, revealing several glowing engine components. The night breeze was raining soot all over the hillside where they crouched under a small tree. Finally, the fire began to diminish.

  “How did he know where to find us?” Karen said.

  Train rubbed his eyes and thought about that. It had to be the phone lines at his house. Mcnair had described where the hospice was, and he’d also intimated that Sherman would be there, that they would all be there. “He got it from Mcnair’s phone call. My phones must be tapped.”

  Karen nodded in the flickering light, knowing the feeling.

  Then she realized what had been tickling the edge of her memory. “That stuff-on the windows. I know what that is. It’s that plastic compound they were using to cover that helicopter-at the Quantico air base.”

  Train looked at her and swore softly. A jet of intense n-orang I e flame hissed out of the engine compartment en the fire found the air conditioner’s Freonflask. Karen shivered in the wet darkness.

  “So young Jack Sherman did his old man another little favor,” she said.

  “He said he’ would. I wish I’d shot him when I had the chance.”

  Train squeezed her hand. “Mcnair will have to move now. After this.”

  Twenty minutes later, they heard a siren approaching, and then a second one. Train got up, helped Karen get to her feet, and put his arm around her. They began to walk sideways down the hill, keeping their distance from the burning hulk. The distant flickering of blue and red lights over the trees was a welcome contrast to the glowing metal carcass on the road.

  Three hours later, they were in Mcnair’s car, headed back Washington.

  Karen was lying crosswise in the backseat, to her legs up on the seat, her sleeping form wrapped in one of the Fenster County EMT blankets.

  Train sat up front with are Mcnair, who had been listening c fully to Train’s debrief of the incident on the county road for the second time.

  Train finished with the arrival of the first EMTS. Their clothes still smelled of char.

  “Pissed me off,” he said. “Burning up my Suburban.”

  “Goddamned lucky you both aren’t toast,” Mcnair replied, accelerating to pass a semi. “This wasn’t a warning.

  You know’t ‘ hat, don’t you? This was for real.”

  “Message received,”

  Train said. He looked back over his shoulder at Karen, but she was still sleeping. “I think it’s time we went over to the offensive. I’m beginning to feel like the settlers barricaded in their cabin. I want to get out in the woods and start killing some Injuns.”

  Mcnair shot him a skeptical look.

  “Yeah, I know,” Train said. “But we need to break the pattern here. We need to act instead of always reacting.

  What I can’t figure is why he upped the ante.”

  “Maybe the commander’s little courtesy call on the Sherman kid had something to do with it.”

  Train nodded silently. He had been thinking the same thing. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s look at that. Galantz wants us out of the way now because we’ve attracted daylight to Sherman’s son. If this is still all about Sherman as the target of revenge, why’s the kid important? Guy like Galantz surely doesn’t need help.”

  Mcnair did not reply. Train let him think about it.

  “Okay, I give up,” Mcnair said. “I can see the ‘what’ part of it but not the ‘why’ part.”

  “My theory,” Train said, “is that Galantz has been planning to fold the kid into his little scheme for a long time.

  From what the kid told Karen, they met back when Jack was still in the Corps, at recon school, where Galantz was probably an instructor. That’d be a good stash for a sweeper.

  Then something happened, maybe even something his new I old man’ engineered, and then Jack was out with a BCD.

  The only friend he’s got in the world now is the guy that got him through recon training.”

  “But what’s the game?” Mcnair said. “Like you said, it’s not like Galantz would need the help of a shitbird like that to off the admiral.”

  “It’s not about killing Admiral Sherman,” Train said.

  “This is about destroying him. Ruining his reputation. Provoking a Navy rubbed raw by a string of scandals to force him out, right when he’s made it to the top. Using the guy’s‘ son would be icing on the cake in that program.”

  “But how?”

  “Picture the headline: ADMIRAL’S SON A MURDERER. Galantz has been thinking ahead of us. He knows you guys will never catch him, so you’ll settle for what you can catch Sherman’s son. Hell, it’s already working.

  Sherman did nothing but attract a homicide cop., and they’ve stashed him sideways over in the Bureau. Then he gets spooke . d and bolts for the hospice. Goes A.W.O.L.. An admiral, for crying out loud. And after this caper tonight, you guys are going have to move. And you’ll move against Jack Sherman, because you know you can pick him up anytime you want.

  Arresting Jack Sherman’ gives the Fairfax County cops a: suspect in custody,’ and any potential political heat dies away.”

  Mcnair shot him a look. “We’re desperate guys,” he grunted. “But not that desperate. And we’re just supposed to forget about Galantz?”

  Train glanced back at Karen, but she was still asleep.

  “Isn’t that what certain federal agencies have already asked you to do?

  You’ve got two probable homicides, and two attempted homicides. You grab up a viable suspect, your face is saved, and you can leave Galantz to the spooks and hope he doesn’t get Sherman, about whom the Navy no longer cares.”

  Mcnair nodded again in the darkness. “it reads,” he said finally.

  “Except for maybe when I take it to a commonwealth’s attorney. Which leads me to believe that this is a really good time for you two to hole up somewhere.”

  “Yes and no Train said. “After tonight, I’d rather be the finder than the findee. I think this guy just wants us dead.” He looked back over his shoulder. Karen’s face was illuminated momentarily in the light of some passing headlights. “I don’t want her exposed to any more of this, and I also want a crack at the real bad guy here. Especially if you guys are gonna back off.”

  Mcnair didn’t answer. He patted the pocket of his suit coat and then sighed. “Goddamn,. I’d like a cigarette. Quit two years ago, and not a day goes by that I don’t crave one., Look, I’ll make a deal with you.

  Give me a day or so. You two get your heads down and stay low. Take her back to your house. I’ll get Stafford County to put some protection on for you, whatever. But basically, you agree to stay put.

  In return, I’ll see what I can do about putting some heat on Galantz.”

  Train thought about it. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

  “Because he’s killed two people on my turf, and tried for two more. That pisses me off-personally. I want his ass.

  Deal?”

  Train thought about it. As they approached Washington, the traffic out on the interstate was heavier, even at this late hour. The stream of red and white lights still had a purplish corona to them. “Okay,” he, said finally. “Deal. Two days. “

  “Okay,
” Mcnair said. “And leave Sherman to me. I’ll break the news to him about his kid’s involvement.”

  SATURDAY.

  Mcnair dropped them off at Karen’s house in Great Falls.

  Karen needed some clothes, and with the Suburban destroyed, they needed a car. Karen’s Mercedes was in the garage. Mcnair stayed in his car to make call while Karen extracted a spare key from its hiding place.

  Once they were in the house; Mcnair left. He had given Train a beeper number in case something came up over the next two days.

  Twenty minutes later, they were out of there and headed for Aquia.

  Karen, refreshed after her long nap in Mcnair’s car, was elected to drive, while Train kept watch behind them, the Glock stuffed between the front bucket seats. He was not going to be surprised by this bastard again. The sodiumvapor lights along the highway still had a reddish purple tinge to them.

  “I’d be happier if Mcnair had come with us,” she said as she pulled the car onto the Beltway.

  “He’s just as tired as we are,” Train said. “Actually, with all this traffic out here, I think we’re reasonably safe.”

  We hope, he thought.

  “Nobody’s safe on the Beltway,” she said. “But at least there’s a phone signal.”

  At which point, the car phone started to ring, startling both of them.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she reached down and hit the button so they could both listen.

  “Hello?” she said.

  Congratulations.

  Karen actually closed her eyes for a moment before she remembered she was driving. Train leaned over to speak into the remote microphone.

  “Gonna try again, Galantz?” You were lucky. Again. As I think I told you, you have to be lucky every time. I have to be lucky only one time.

  “You some kind of ghost, Galantz? Only come out at night?”

  Not a ghost, von Rensel. A grotesque, to be sure. I have one eye, a scar that bisects my face, a stainless-steel hand, and a Teflon larynx. I am memorable.

  “So what now, Galantz? Calling to tell us you have the admiral tied up somewhere?”

  There was an audible wheeze, a precursor breath each time before the voice replied.