Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  He adjusted the volume of the synthesizer output.

  “Where—are—you-holding—her?” he asked, enunciating each word very deliberately, letting the anger leak into his own voice.

  Jared blinked his eyes to get the sweat out of them as he took a series of short, difficult breaths. Then he pushed up with all his might. He relaxed and then did it again, trying to get a rhythm in it, as if he were trying to rock the trailer off of his chest. All the while he kept mouthing the same thing, Fuck you. Fuck you. He actually got the trailer to move a tiny bit, and then, in a blast of adrenaline, he

  accentuated the rhythm. Kreiss slammed his gloved hand against the metal side of the trailer, trying to shock Jared into stopping it. But before he could say anything, Jared heaved again and the frame member slid just off the lift point of the jack. Instantly, the jack punched through the flimsy metal bottom pan of the trailer and all ten thousand pounds of the structure crunched down to obliterate Jared McGarand in one grotesque sound. Kreiss stared in fury for a second and then slammed his hand against the trailer again and swore out loud. Then he sat back on his haunches, closed his eyes, and took some deep breaths.

  Control, control, control, he thought. The dumb son of a bitch had killed himself, and taken with him the one thing Kreiss had to know. But the important thing was that Lynn was alive} She was probably being held out there in one of those buildings at the arsenal. He knew there had been at least two men operating out there. Now they were going to be one short. He had to find the other man, and do so before the other man found out about this one.

  He opened his eyes and looked down at the trailer. The only sign of what had just happened was the bent handle of the jack, which was sticking out from the dirt under the edge of the trailer like a broken bone.

  Then he caught the smell of jared’s corpse releasing itself. He thought about what to do. There probably wasn’t another jack available, so he couldn’t extract the body. And even if he did, he would be faced with a body-disposal problem. He had not intended for Jared to die, although he wasn’t exactly sorry.

  “You do, she starves.” Good news and bad news.

  He stood up and retrieved the lantern. If he left the scene as it was, Jared would eventually be found. By the second man? Could he set up a trap right here? No. If he did that, he would have to wait until the second man showed up, if ever. Meanwhile, Lynn was locked up somewhere and the clock was ticking, assuming Jared’s threat about her starving was real.

  No, he wasn’t going to wait. He would pursue the second man. First, sanitize this scene, then go after the bastard. He looked back down at the trailer. He would make it look like Jared had gone under the trailer by himself for some reason, and then the thing had collapsed on him. It would stand a cursory investigation, as long as he set things right. If they got forensics into it, well, that would be another matter.

  He looked at his watch. He had to assume that that tag had been tracked, so he didn’t have the rest of the night to set the stage here. The taped conversation indicated the other man wouldn’t be going back into the arsenal until Saturday night. He would sanitize this scene and then go out to the arsenal and spend Saturday looking for Lynn.

  But Jared here had already rigged one trap. He could probably spot another one of those, but what if there were others? Alternatively, he could call in that FBI lady:

  She had clearly offered collaboration. If the FBI believed him, they could flood the industrial area with people and search all the buildings. But what if Lynn wasn’t in a building? What if she was hidden in one of those bunkers back out there in the two thousand acres? Or in a cave somewhere?

  And what were the chances of the Bureau believing him? Especially in view of the unholy alliance they apparently had going with Justice and the Agency. Charlie Ransom had been supposed to deliver a message, and now Kreiss thought he knew what that message was: We don’t have her. He’d thought of that, of course, but he had kept his end of the bargain, and thus he had no reason to think they would not keep theirs. He could, of course, be all wrong about that.

  All his instincts told him that he shouldn’t trust anyone from Washington, especially in view of the surveillance tag he’d found. That was sweeper gear. Maybe someone up there had decided to move against him because Lynn had gone missing. He had known all along that the deal might not survive if circumstances changed in Washington.

  Focus, he told himself. Ambush the second man, find out where Lynn is hidden, and then retrieve her.

  As he walked back to the truck to get his other gloves, he realized he still had no idea what those two men were doing out there at the arsenal.

  Then he realized he didn’t give a damn. In a little over twenty-four hours, even if he had to pull some guy’s limbs off one by one to find out where she was, he would have Lynn back. That was all that mattered. And she had better be unharmed.

  She was alive}

  Janet Carter was still disappointed with herself when she got up on Saturday morning. She had dutifully called Farnsworth the night before to tell him about the bug. There had been an embarrassed silence on the line for a long moment, and then Farnsworth somewhat sheepishly admitted that he had ordered the Roanoke surveillance squad to put a locator device on her car.

  “Those Agency people made me nervous,” he said.

  “I’m still not a hundred percent sure what the hell they’re up to.”

  “Sir, I know I’m fairly new to street work,” she said, “but somebody could have told me.”

  Farnsworth ducked that one.

  “I’m curious—how’d you spot it?” he had asked.

  “I didn’t. I’d proposed the Donaldson-Brown Center at Virginia Tech for the meet. Kreiss saw them put it on. He was watching from his hotel room. He told me.”

  “He took a room in the hotel where you did the meet?” Farnsworth said with a chuckle.

  “Told you, that guy is a pro. Just forget about the locator for the time being, Janet. What did you achieve with Kreiss?”

  Janet had been unwilling to admit total failure.

  “He’s thinking about it, but he made no commitments. He’s focused on finding his daughter.”

  “Did you get any sense of where he’s been looking?”

  “Locally. He wouldn’t admit to going into the arsenal, but he already knew that was Site R. I think he’s been there.”

  “Based on what evidence?”

  “Based on no evidence.”

  “And that was it?”

  She hesitated.

  “I gave him my pager. Told him if we got anything on his daughter, we might need to get a hold of him.”

  “He took your pager? It’s probably in the river by now.”

  “I’m not so sure. I’m telling you—he is totally focused on finding his daughter. Why not take the pager? If we get something, he’d want to hear it.”

  She realized later that Farnsworth hadn’t reminded her of the obvious:

  No one in the Roanoke office was looking for Kreiss’s daughter anymore.

  He did tell her to keep him informed and then hung up. She had gone back down to the parking lot to the Bureau car, where she searched for and found the tracking device. It was a lot bigger than she had expected.

  She’d pulled it off the frame, and then she went across the parking lot and mounted it on the RAs personal Bureau car. Then she had driven home.

  Her Saturday seminar at Virginia Tech began at ten o’clock, after which she grabbed some lunch and then went back to her Bureau car. She found a gas station, where she changed into some outdoor clothes and refueled, then drove south out of Blacksburg through Christiansburg and Ramsey, until she came to the New River bridge on Route 11. From there, according to her map, it was five miles south to the arsenal entrance. She arrived at a little before 2:00 P.M.” and discovered that she could not drive directly up to the main gates of the installation because of a concrete-barrel barrier. She got back on Route 11 and spent an hour trying to drive around the a
rsenal’s perimeter, but she got nowhere. Then she went back to the main

  entrance road, got out, and wrestled one of the barrels out of the way. She drove through, replaced the barrel, and then drove up a short hill through a stand of trees to the main gates, where she came head-to-head with a small white pickup truck that was coming through the gates.

  She pulled to one side, stopped, and parked. The pickup came all the way through the gates and stopped. She got out and identified herself to the two young men in the truck, which had a logo on the door proclaiming federal SECURITY SYSTEMS. One of them had a bad case of acne, while the other sported multiple earrings on both ears and a diseased looking metal protrusion behind his lower lip. Judas Priest, she thought, this freak has pierced a tooth} She told them she wanted to make a windshield tour of the arsenal.

  They examined her credentials and badge, then told her that she could not drive onto the reservation without prior authorization. She asked them to get it, and they pointed out it was a Saturday. They went back and forth like this for a few minutes, and then they compromised by letting her park outside the main gates and walk in. They would lock the front gates using the chain and combination lock, but they would give her the combination. They warned her gravely that they would change it the next time they came through. They gave her a map of the complex and told her that the industrial area was not a place she wanted to spend much time walking around in without a mask and gloves. She asked why.

  “They made bombs and shit for the Army back there,” Pimples said.

  “Like lots of seriously toxic chemicals, going back to World War One? As in, a long time before there was an EPA or any rules about disposal? We, like, stay in the truck. With the windows up, okay?”

  “Don’t go, like, kicking up any dust,” the pierced beauty said.

  “You’ve just made a tour of the entire facility?”

  “Uh, no, not this time,” Pierced said, glancing sideways at Pimples.

  “We did the bunkers. We did the industrial area last time.”

  “We want, like, to minimize the time in that area?” Pimples said.

  “That’s why we did the bunker fields.”

  She solemnly thanked them for all their assistance and terrific advice.

  They waited while she got her FBI windbreaker, some gloves, a flashlight, and a bottle of water out of her car and locked it up. They stared at the sidearm bolstered in her shoulder rig. Pierced made a big deal of writing down her name and badge number before they left, and she thanked them again. They waved as they left. She could hear

  their radio cranking back up as they drove down the access road to the main gate. She stared after the dynamic duo for a moment. Like, if that’s security, the arsenal is, like, in trouble, man, she told herself.

  Once they were out of sight, she went back and tried the combination.

  She unlocked the padlock, slid one side of the big chain-link gate back on its wheels, and then brought the car through. She closed the gate but left the heavy padlock unlocked, dangling on its chain. As far as she was concerned, this was a federal reservation and she was federal law. She wasn’t about to answer to two postadolescent assholes from some podunk rent-acop organization. She put her stuff in the trunk, got back in the car, looked quickly at the map, and drove down the main road toward the industrial area.

  Kreiss toyed with the idea of splicing together a voice message from jared to the other man, in which Jared would agree to meet him at the site Saturday night after all. That way, the other man would get there and wait, which would make it easier for Kreiss to take him. But then he discarded the idea: It would take some specialized equipment and a lot of time to lift Jared’s voice and words from the recorder and kludge together a workable message. He would just go out there three hours before sunset and set up in the area of the rail gate. And stay away from the steel plates in the main street of the industrial area, he reminded himself.

  In the meantime, he’d learned that the second man was probably a relative.

  He had looked up the name McGarand in three local phone books and found, in addition to Jared, a B. McGarand located in Blacksburg, with the same phone number intercepted by the recorder. The man had sounded much older. A grandfather? Uncle? The listing gave him an address in Blacksburg, and he toyed with the idea of going over there and starting early. But there was too much he didn’t know: Would there be family members? Children? A crowded neighborhood? He didn’t want another Millwood, which ordinarily meant that he would have to do a lot of reconnaissance. No, it made more sense to wait for the man at the remote arsenal, in the darkness after sunset. There was always a chance that B. McGarand might call Jared back to convince him to make the rendezvous, but he doubted it: The older man had sounded genuinely angry.

  That left only one remaining complication: someone discovering Jared’s body under the trailer. He thought that unlikely, at least in the next twenty-four hours. The mailbox was up at the head of the dirt road,

  and unless Mr. B. McGarand went out there himself, Jared would stay put until the buzzards gave him away.

  He spent the early afternoon checking the perimeter of his property for any sign that the Agency people had come back. Then he re swept the cabin for delayed-action bugs. He even went over to Micah’s to see if he’d seen or heard anyone creeping around, but Micah said he had people watching and that the woods were empty. If anything federal showed up on the roads or in the woods, Micah would give him warning. He checked out his truck again, but he found nothing other than Special Agent Carter’s pager on his front seat. It was just a small black box with an LED readout window. He scanned it for a carrier signal, but it was a receive-only device. He started to turn it off, but then he thought about it: He was probably closer to finding Lynn than they were. But Carter might have another warning for him about the Washington contingent. If he’d successfully swept out all the tags, they might try to come find him.

  He was so close to recovering Lynn that he would do everything in his power to avoid them just now. So he left the pager on but threw it into the glove compartment. That way, if there was a transmitter in it, being in the glove compartment would attenuate the hell out of any signal that little thing could produce. Then he went back to the cabin to prepare for the night’ sops

  Janet had driven around the entire Ramsey Arsenal for almost two hours, seeing mostly bunkers, more bunkers, and pine trees. Hundreds of bunkers and thousands of pine trees, to be exact. She had crossed and recrossed a creek that must have transected the entire installation, but that seemed to be the only moving thing on the entire reservation. The steel doors on all the bunkers were rusted and securely locked, with no signs or labels to indicate what had been stored there. By four o’clock, she was back at the industrial area, pausing on a street in front of what looked like the site’s power plant. Around her, there were dozens of buildings, sheds, tanks, and towers scattered around a maze of streets, alleys, and rail-siding lines.

  Okay, she thought, if this is Site R, it might have made an interesting afternoon exploration for three college kids on a camping expedition. But so what? She could well believe that the EPA had listed this site, based on the fact that nothing green was growing within a hundred yards of any of the buildings. Even with the air conditioning going, she

  could detect the chemical smell in the air. Could the kids have gone into one these big buildings and locked themselves in by accident? She hoped not—it had been four weeks now, and even with some camping supplies, they would be on their way to mummy status by now. None of the buildings appeared to have windows of any kind, and those doors looked like they had been made to restrain powerful forces. That dark kid said they were going to break into Site R. Break into. So, it fit. Maybe the thing to do was to call out the Army or whoever owned this mausoleum and search every bloody building. She thought of Edwin Kreiss, pictured him sitting out here on the curb and watching a bunch of soldiers search the buildings. It was not a pretty image. Plus, there was all t
hat bomb-cell theory the Washington people had been talking about.

  Hell with it. This was pointless. Her assignment was to get close to Kreiss, see what he was doing. Find a leverage point. And then she thought once more about the mysterious bombers. She looked around again. Now that would make sense. The aTF was right: This would be an absolutely perfect place to set up a bomb lab. But they’d been through the place and found nothing. Assuming aTF knew what a bomb lab looked like, she was not likely to find something they had not. So go home, regroup. Get a line on Kreiss. Have a drink. Find a life.

  She put the car in gear, went up the street in front of the power plant, turned left, and drove up the hill on what appeared to be the main drag.

  The car banged noisily over huge steel plates that were spaced every fifty feet or so. She slowed down so as not to hit them so hard, and she was reaching for her purse when the car suddenly banged on something and then tilted down at an impossible angle. She slammed on the brakes, but it was too late—the car was plunging down into a black hole. She started to scream, but the air bag smothered it as the car hit bottom with an enormous crash and all the side windows blew out in a shower of safety glass.

  The engine shut down at the jolt, and it sounded as if some major components had fallen off the underside of the vehicle.

  She took a moment to recover her breath and to get her hands disentangled from the air bag. The skin on her face and wrists stung from the air bag, and the seat belt had damn near cut her into three pieces. She couldn’t see much through a cloud of dust, and then she realized she was in darkness, or semidarkness—there was a cone of light coming from above. The windshield was intact but out of its frame. The concrete flanks of what appeared to be an immense tunnel rose up on either side of the car. Her ribs hurt and her shins were

  bruised, but she didn’t think she’d sustained any major injuries. The car, on the other hand, felt very wrong.

  It was sitting too low upon whatever it had landed. And the angle was odd, with the back significantly lower than the front. She was in some kind of tunnel, and it felt like the tunnel sloped down behind her. She saw the rungs of a ladder embedded into the concrete wall to one side, so at least there was a way out of here.