Cold Frame

by P. T. Deutermann

  He looked up. The wire was being stabilized by another man who was leaning out of a side hatch in the aircraft. In the clouds of downdraft spray under the helo he saw the little boat pop over the falls, drop straight down into that roiling black water, and then disappear without a trace. He bumped up against the side of the aircraft, and then someone pulled him in, removed the horse collar, dropped a cloth hood over his face, and pushed him away from the hatch until he bumped up against a bulkhead. The helicopter continued to hover for a few more seconds until the man below him was hauled in. Then it lifted urgently away from the river’s surface, banked hard, dipped its nose, and accelerated.

  * * *

  Hiram watched the crowd of menacing vehicles converging at the front gates, their strobe lights flashing a whole spectrum of color. Nobody was moving, yet.

  “Thomas,” he said. “I think we should go ahead and open the gates. Not sure we could find any more like those.”

  Thomas flicked on the main entrance lights and then commanded the gates to open. Hiram reached over to a side table and picked up a telephone.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  “Home invasion,” Hiram stated, matter-of-factly. He gave the address for Whitestone Hall, and then added: “Shots fired.”

  Thomas raised his eyebrows. “Always wanted to say that,” Hiram said, his hand over the telephone’s microphone. The operator wanted to know how many people were in the house and where they were located. Hiram told them two and that they were in the library. She asked how many intruders were at the scene. “About thirty,” Hiram said, and then hung up. “Now get me the news-tip hotline number at WTOP,” he told Thomas, who punched the station’s name into a computer.

  “877-222-1035,” Thomas said. Hiram dialed the number as he watched the screen. The crowd at the front gate didn’t seem to know what to do now that the big gates were open and they were all standing under floodlights.

  “WTOP: news hotline,” a young woman’s voice announced.

  Hiram told her that one of the mansions out in Great Falls was being assaulted by a government SWAT team, and gave her the address. “There are reports of gunfire,” he concluded and then hung up.

  Out front a line of armed men in bulky defensive gear had started through the gates and were spreading out on either side of the driveway.

  “Not too far, boys,” Hiram muttered. “Stay on the road.”

  Then one of the unarmed vehicles turned in and headed for the house. The rest of the vehicles remained clustered around the front gates, while one SUV, bristling with antennae, crawled slowly down the lane toward where the intrusion team had first climbed the wall. The tank had backed out of the scene when the gates opened.

  “Showtime,” Hiram said, getting out of his chair. Thomas got up as well but Hiram waved him back down. “Stay on the consoles, watch the walls. They may try again.”

  Thomas reached under his cable-knit sweater and produced a handgun.

  Hiram smiled and shook his head. “That would be all they’d need,” he said. “No, I’m going to do a little monster Kabuki. See how they like that. Unlock the front doors.”

  The screen showed the SUV had reached the area of the front portico. Three men were getting out of the vehicle, two in defensive tactical gear with weapons, and one in just a suit, a small portable radio visible in one hand. Hiram walked through the library and down the main hall of the house, pausing only to pick a pretty pink flower from a vase. He squeezed the flower and then applied the resulting fluid to his closed eyes. He felt a mild stinging sensation, and then the surface of his eyes went numb. He glanced in a mirror as he walked toward the front doors. His eyes were now bright red.

  He stopped halfway to the door and waited. There was a tentative knock on the front doors, and then, after a long minute, someone tried the right-hand door and swung it open. The three men stepped into the darkened hallway, and that’s when Hiram drew himself to his full height and began to walk toward them, affecting just the slightest limp.

  “Holy shit!” one of the armed men said when he saw Hiram approaching. All three of them stopped in their tracks. The two armed men adjusted their grips on their weapons and moved away from the man in the suit. Hiram focused on that man: he had to be the boss. He walked up to within three feet of the suit, leaned forward, and opened his eyes wide.

  The suit made a noise and stepped back away from this glaring, red-eyed apparition leaning over him.

  “What do you want?” Hiram asked in his best imitation of a sepulchral voice. He resisted the temptation to put a Boris Karloff accent in play, something he had mastered a long time ago.

  “We—um—we want Detective Sergeant Kenneth Smith of the Metro Washington Police Department,” the suit said. He was about forty, pasty-faced, and incongruously out of shape considering the company he was keeping.

  “Where is he?” the man asked.

  One of the armed men pressed a hand to his head and listened to a message from the front gate. Then he spoke up. “Fairfax County cops are on scene?” he announced.

  The suit hesitated, and then asked Hiram again: where was the detective sergeant?

  “He was here and now he is not,” Hiram said, inching closer to this obviously frightened civil servant. “He came by boat, he left by boat. He’s on the river. How is your intrusion team?”

  “Wha-a-t?” the man answered. “What intrusion team?”

  “The ones who fired automatic weapons in my gardens,” Hiram said, leaning forward. The man practically quailed. “They are lucky to be alive. Did you know that? That is a venom garden. The plants out there can eat and digest humans. I suggest you leave now.”

  “I must search this house,” the man said in a weak voice.

  “Show me your search warrant,” Hiram replied.

  “I don’t have one,” the man said. “Actually, I don’t need one. This is a matter of national security. The FISA court can backdate—”

  At that moment the sounds of a helicopter could be heard coming through the open front doors. It made a waspish sound, not military at all. The guard who’d received the first radio message again pressed the side of his helmet to his ear.

  “News chopper,” he said, looking worried for the first time.

  Hiram chose this moment to step forward and get so close to the suit that the man had to literally bend his neck back to look into Hiram’s massive face. “Do you wish to become immortal?” Hiram whispered, baring his huge teeth just a little.

  “Wha-a-t?” the man squeaked.

  “Whoever sent you would want you to leave now, before all of you become national news. Think of me appearing on national television and telling the world what your people did tonight. Without a warrant. Without informing the local police forces. Climbing a wall and invading a private residence. Firing automatic weapons—against plants.” Hiram straightened up. “Go now, while you still can.”

  He then turned his back on them and walked back down the hall into the gloom at the other end. To his immense satisfaction he heard them scampering out the front doors.

  He glanced up at the surveillance camera at the end of the hall. “Oscar, yes?” he asked the watching Thomas. “At least an Emmy.”

  He could hear Thomas laughing all the way from the comm center.

  Back in the communications room Thomas had been watching the scene unfold at the front gates as the Fairfax County police argued with all the unmarked federals. Hiram wished he had an audio feed from the gates. Then a second news chopper appeared, this one a bit more bold than the first one. The aircraft swooped down over the trees along the river and then came slowly up the wall with its landing lights on. The first helicopter immediately maneuvered to take advantage of the lighting to film the entire cluster-fuck going on out on the lane. They’ll all be bailing out pretty soon, Hiram thought. The black world of counterterrorism feared nothing so much as the sudden arrival of the media.

  “Boss?” Thomas said.

  Hiram turne
d around and looked at the screen. A ghostly green figure was moving up the western side of the defensive garden.

  “Well, well,” Hiram said. “All the Hollywood out front was, what—a diversion?”

  “Apparently so,” Thomas said. “But look where he’s headed.”

  “Ah,” Hiram said. “You know what, Thomas? These people are beginning to annoy me.”

  “God help them, then,” Thomas muttered.

  * * *

  Av felt the aircraft settling in altitude as it flew in what seemed like pretty much a straight line. His back was against a bulkhead, and he was still hooded. No one had done anything to restrain him, but he felt the presence of large men in tactical gear sitting on either side of him. The inside of the helicopter smelled of sweat, gun oil, hydraulic oil, and ozone in about equal proportions. That side hatch was still partially open, which helped.

  He forced himself to relax. They were waiting for me, he thought. As soon as he’d made it halfway across the river, there they were, and probably a good thing, too. He’d been a lot closer to that dam Thomas had warned him about than he’d known. He could still see the little boat going over what looked like a nothing waterfall and just disappearing in a roil of shiny black water.

  So: who were “they”? Mandeville’s people? Tactically trained operators from the other side of that mythical Chinese wall between the DMX and the real work?

  He felt the men on either side of him move away from the bulkhead.

  “We’re going to land now,” one of them said, leaning in to speak through the hood. “Then we’re going to get out. Do we need to restrain you?”

  Av said no. The hood was secured by tight elastic around his throat. Where was he going to go?

  “Be cool,” the man said. “Don’t make me break one of your legs.” As if to emphasize the point, the invisible man tapped what felt like an iron rod on his shinbone. Av resisted the impulse to cry out. That really hurt.

  The helicopter did some banking and turning and then pitched up slightly, the rotors gaining power as the machine flared out to make its approach. A moment of sideslipping, lots more noise from the rotors, and then he felt the aircraft bump gently down onto the ground. Almost immediately the engines began to whine down. The rotors followed suit, spinning down from full RPM to an almost gentle whop-whop as they shed lift and airspeed. Av could almost see them starting to droop.

  He heard doors sliding fully open on both sides of the aircraft and then he was hoisted upright. Someone removed his sheath knife.

  “Steps,” the man said. “Wire handrails on either side. Go down, slowly.”

  Av stepped out and down onto the first step. He reached for the wires and found them.

  Once on the ground, both of his escorts moved in and walked him up what felt like a grassy slope. He could still smell the jet engine exhaust through the rough cloth of the hood. Then he stumbled when his right foot hit concrete. The men kept him from falling and then told him to stop.

  “Bench,” one of them said, turning him around and then pushing him down onto what felt like a wooden park bench. The other one took hold of Av’s right forearm and pressed it down onto the bench. Av felt some kind of restraint slip over his hand and then click down onto the bench. Then he sensed he was alone, although the two men made no sound as they walked away.

  It was cool, wherever he was. The helicopter was silent now, although not very far away. He could hear its engines clicking in the night air as the turbines cooled down. He thought he could hear another, lower-register sound in the distance. The river? Yes, that’s what it was. So they were somewhere along the Potomac, probably on the Virginia side since the river noise seemed to be coming from way below where he was sitting.

  Nothing happened for about fifteen minutes, but then he heard the sound of a heavy automobile crunching its way over gravel and coming in his direction. The vehicle stopped not too far away. He waited for the sounds of doors opening, but now there was just the sound of the river pushing through the palisades. He heard some radio communications chattering from a speaker in the direction of the helicopter. He caught a whiff of cigarette smoke, which told him that whoever was nearby, they weren’t exactly excited by what they were doing.

  He surreptitiously tried the arm restraint, which seemed to be working just fine. The bench was rock solid and probably bolted to the ground. Not going anywhere soon, he thought. Still no noises from the vehicle, but definitely more cigarette smoke. They were obviously all waiting for someone. He thought he knew who that someone was going to be.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Hiram picked up the phone and dialed a number. While it rang he asked Thomas if he’d managed to put the tracking button somewhere in Av’s clothing. Thomas nodded.

  “This is Ellen Whiting.”

  “We got him out onto the river and we’ve dealt with the clowns they sent to grab him here,” Hiram said.

  “The HRT has him,” she said. “With any luck it’ll be going down in about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “Where?”

  “Fort Marcy Park,” she said. “Off the GW Parkway. You know, where that Clinton lawyer supposedly shot himself.”

  “Do you have any kind of support?”

  “Couldn’t reach out to anybody federal beyond the HRT, not for this, but the sergeant’s partners are with me. If he comes, he won’t come alone, but I think we can handle it.”

  “Very well,” Hiram said. “I’ve got one loose end to deal with here, and then we’ll be right along.”

  “Loose end?” she said.

  “I think the first intrusion was a diversion. The real deal’s here now. One guy.”

  “Watch yourself,” she said. “But hurry.”

  “This won’t take long, Special Agent. He’s about to enter the snake pool garden.”

  “Jesus, Hiram,” she said. “Snake pool?”

  “Just a figure of speech, my dear,” Hiram said and then hung up.

  He turned back to the big screen, while keeping one eye out for any activity on the front-gate display, visible on the right-hand screen. The figure creeping through the woods was clearly visible. Adrenaline, Hiram thought. Warms you up. Who are you?

  “How far from the edge?” he asked.

  “Thirty yards, maybe less. Looks like he’s checking a weapon of some kind.”

  “Close in.”

  The telephoto function revealed the man checking a semiautomatic handgun with a bulb of some kind at the end of the barrel. “Silencer,” Thomas said. “Start the warm-water matrix?”

  “Yes. Add ten percent nitrogen and UV lights as well. Stir those things up. That’s a killer out there.”

  Thomas punched control orders into his console, and eighty-degree water began to push out to what they called the snake garden. There were no snakes, of course, or at least none of theirs. Surrounded by strategically placed Spanish dagger plantings was an Olympic-sized pool with what looked like a narrow, grass-covered footbridge across the midpoint. Based on where the intruder had gained access to the grounds, there was really no other covert way to go if someone was trying to get near the house from the direction of the river without a lot of backtracking, other than taking a very exposed walk up the gravel walk between the cascading pools.

  It was what was inside this pool that made it a wholly different proposition than the scary monsters on the landward side of the estate. The pool was roughly rectangular and twenty feet deep, and filled with a species of African water vine that had evolved to trap and feed on animal proteins. They grew just below the surface of still water and created a great mass of vines, tubes, and tendrils, all rooted in three feet of muck. They fed during the daytime, hence the injection of warm water into the pool and the rise of the UV radiation would stimulate their tendrils to secrete a water-impervious sticky substance all along the vines. Hiram had nurtured this particular specimen because it, of all his plants, acted most like it had a brain of some kind.

  The figure stopped when he encount
ered the pool and the footbridge. He turned to his left but then saw the wall of Spanish dagger. He was wearing night vision gear with its own illuminator, which made it easy for the estate’s IR video system to track him. The man then went to his right and found the second stand of Spanish dagger plants. He came back to the footbridge across the pool.

  He clearly did not want to cross that pool.

  “This one senses the trap,” Hiram observed.

  “Then we need to motivate him,” Thomas said.

  “Right, do it.”

  Thomas activated the line of small speakers that had been mounted in trees down near the river. He selected the program that would make the sounds of a group of men starting to spread out in the woods and then come forward on the trail of the intruder. The sounds were started at a very low level, barely audible behind where the intruder was now, unless he was listening very carefully. They’d continue, gaining slightly in volume, then stop suddenly for a couple of minutes as the search team “froze” for some reason. Then they’d resume, getting louder now but still barely audible. If that didn’t do it, Thomas could add the whining of eager but still restrained search dogs to the mix.

  The posse program, as they called it, had run only for about sixty seconds when the intruder made his decision.

  * * *

  Hurry up and wait, Av thought. Just like being back in the Marines. He felt himself getting sleepy. He yawned. He was bushed.

  A part of his brain reminded him that he’d just been plucked out of the river by some kind of military team, blinded by a black hood, and then deposited on the ground, only to be handcuffed to a park bench. He tried to recall how all this had started.